‘A . . . tender love story . . . This book is alive. It pulses with warmth and intelligence’ The Times
A wickedly observed novel about falling in love at the end of your life, by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question.
At the age of ninety-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everything – including her own children. She spends her days stitching morbid samplers and tormenting her two carers with tangled tales of her husbands and affairs.
Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, walks without a frame and speaks without spitting. Among the widows of North London, he’s whispered about as the last of the eligible bachelors. He forgets nothing –especially not the shame of a childhood incident that has long hung over him. There’s very little left remaining for either of them. . . But perhaps just enough to heal some of the hurt inflicted along the way, and find new meaning in what’s left.
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE 2020*
