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Living In Perhaps
Living In Perhaps
Aug 16, 2025 4:03 PM

Author:Julia Widdows

Living In Perhaps

Carol has always resented her family - her mother, endlessly knitting, her father and his obsession with next door's encroaching garden hedge, and her brother, ever silent and scheming.

So when she is invited to meet the vibrant, bohemian family next door in their messy house full of books and paintings and empty of rules, Carol soon begins a secret double life over the much-hated garden hedge. Here Carol voices her greatest fantasy and tells her first major lie...that she is adopted.

But on her 16th birthday Carol receives the shock of her life when her wish comes true. And as, years later, Carol frenetically narrates her story from a psychiatric unit, we realise how it affected her and those around her in the darkest of ways...

Reviews

An enthralling collection of characters who quickly draw you right into their sinister world. An absolute gem, I couldn't put it down

—— Kate Long, author of The Bad Mother's Handbook

Day-dreamy Carol, the wryly funny and acerbically observant narrator, teasingly reveals her story . . . in this smart, sad and funny debut

—— Daily Mail

A dark, witty and heart breaking novel where fantasy and reality collide with devastating consequences

—— bettybookmark.co.uk (5 stars)

Quietly fascinating... Bail's prose is as full of space and glaring, almost painful light as the landscape... This book is as hard and sparse as that landscape, but no less beautiful for that

—— Jonathan Gibbs , Independent

Bail's highly idiosyncratic style resembles a choppy sea in which phrases and images constantly jostle each other to send up a dazzlingly brilliant spray. In addition, his ability to conjure up a character in a paragraph or even a mere sentence is remarkable

—— Francis King , Literary Review

The novel makes no pretence of providing unambiguous answers, but takes us on a beguiling, questing journey

—— Nick Rennison , Sunday Times

Murray Bail marshals the tensions between his characters and their ideas to great effect

—— Peter Scott , The Telegraph

A gratifyingly dry wit pervades this novel of ideas

—— Chris Ross , The Guardian

Truly gripping

—— Big Issue

Opening with a mysterious yet distressing anecdote about a girl driving dangerously, Peter Ferry's first novel immediately captures the reader's imagination, drawing you into a story filled with humour, tenderness and suspense... The novel is as entertaining as it is intriguing and is not to be missed

—— Aesthetica

A very neat piece of storytelling

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

A neat piece of storytelling

—— Johanna Thomas-Corr , Scotsman

A lovely and heartbreaking book . . . Julia Glass writes the sort of novels you wish would go on forever; such is your immediate attachment to her impeccably drawn characters . . . [she] offers up intimate examinations of the lives on complex people, recognizable for their insecurities and strengths, failings and successes, humor and sadness, loves and loves lost.

—— Miami Herald

An arresting story that is both thorny and complex ... A wonderful novelist will expose truths that elude us in the everyday. [Glass's] eye in I See You Everywhere takes in blind spots and makes them mesmerizing

—— New York Daily News

Julia Glass is a writer firmly in control

—— Dallas Morning News

Glass elegantly captures what it means to be an independent and spirited contemporary woman

—— Chicago Tribune

Beautifully written

—— Image Magazine

It is expertly written in its way, and oddly compelling - like a slushy movie you can't help but respond to

—— Guardian

Moving and thoughtful ... Poignant and compelling, this lyrical novel lifts the veil on an internal world of love, rivalry and misunderstanding; an intricate depiction of sibling relationships

—— Good Book Guide

A beautifully evocative and intelligent novel

—— Woman & Home

This impassioned tale is a gripping read

—— James Smart , The Guardian

Jones is fabulous...offering titbits of danger and discord, yet keeping a cool matter-of-fact tone for the big horrors

—— Sunday Times

Her second novel is a must-read; a devastating, brilliant account of what happens when everything a man believes in...begins to crumble

—— Cath Kidson Magazine

Full of danger and discord

—— Sunday Times Summer Reading
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