The White Stuff | Fiction - www.zzdbook.com

The White Stuff

Feb 23, 2026 11:35 AM

Author:Simon Armitage

The White Stuff

Abbie Fenton wants a baby. Her husband Felix, not unaware of the thunderous ticking of Abbie's biological clock, wants to oblige but their home has still to be blessed. Cue the usual round of doctors, tests, probes and scans - all to no avail.

So Abbie - adopted at birth - decides that if she can't have a child then she must at least discover whose child she is. Soon, she and Felix are caught up in a make-or-break search for family, identity and meaning. And little do they know quite where the journey will take them ...

Reviews

A very special novel indeed

—— Tom Boncza-Tomaszewski , Independent on Sunday

Jones has a flair for luminous and accurate prose... A passionate book

—— Guardian

Gem-like, lyrical portrait of a girl growing-up

—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent

Reads like a luminous album of photographs marked by an almost unbearable sadness

—— Weekend Australian

An immensely well crafted novel

—— Sunday Independent

A transcendentally harmonious and compassionate work

—— Times Literary Supplement

A surprisingly tender book... Amid the terror a classic story about love sneaks through: love lost, love imagined, love morphed into madness

—— New York Times Book Review

Beautifully written... It puts a human face on the suffering inflicted by the Taliban... Disturbing and mesmerizing, The Swallows of Kabul will stay with you long after you've finished it

—— San Francisco Chronicle

Riveting... Spare, taut, and pristinely clear prose... An uncanny knack for making moral tension palpable... Extraordinarily moving

—— Philadelphia Inquirer

A novel very much in the tradition of Albert Camus, not only in its humanism and concern with the consequences of individual choices but also in its determination to bear witness to the absurdities of daily life... [A] chilling portrait of fundamentalism run amok and its fallout on ordinary people

—— New York Times

Previous Article：The Nun Next Article：Plays Unpleasant

Comments

Welcome to zzdbook comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.