by Chris Cleave
First published 2006
A woman watches her husband and four-year-old son head off to a football match at a London stadium. She stays home, nursing a hangover and her guilt about an affair. Then a suicide bomber detonates explosives in the crowd, killing thousands including her family. The attack leaves her completely alone, drowning in grief and struggling to make sense of a world that has suddenly turned violent and unpredictable. She must navigate not only her devastating personal loss but also a city and nation transformed by terror. The bombing marks just the start of her ordeal as she tries to rebuild some kind of life from the wreckage. Her story unfolds through a voice that swings between raw pain and unexpected moments of dark comedy, capturing how ordinary people cope when everything familiar gets ripped away.
Genres: fiction, drama, literary-fiction, contemporary, psychological-thriller, 21st-century
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: grief, loss, unreliable-narrator
Setting: London
Period: 21st-century
239 pages · Paperback · Anchor
Content warnings: death, violence