On sale UK 24 June
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On sale USA 4 August
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On sale Australia now
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‘Compassionate, funny and chock-full of painfully acute observations of compromise, friendship ageing and marriage (in all its forms), The Weekend is one of those deceptively compact novels that continues to open doors in your mind long after the last page.’
- Patrick Gale ‘Friendship, ambition, love, sexual politics and death: it’s all here in one sharp, funny, heartbreaking and gorgeously-written package. I loved it.’ - Paula Hawkins ‘A lovely, lively, intelligent, funny book… So good on ageing and on the fraught, warm friendships between women.’ - Tessa Hadley “An insightful, poignant, and fiercely honest novel about female friendship and female aging.” - Sigrid Nunez ‘Masterful … the prose is sharply vivid and precise, the characters and location exceptionally real and I challenge anyone to write a better description of an elderly dog and its owner.’ - Rosamund Lupton “Rich with character and nuance, The Weekend reminds us all that life doesn’t stop—whatever our age. A masterpiece of women’s fiction like nothing I’ve ever read.” - Christina Dalcher ‘An unflinchingly observed celebration of the profundity and mundanity of friendship, treated with elegance, wit, and tenderness.’ - Kiran Millwood Hargrave ‘Positively hums with life… I loved it.’ - Claire Fuller |
'The temptation to reduce ageing to a condition experienced en masse rather than by individuals is a trap that snares only lesser writers. The better ones have avoided it – writers such as Nora Ephron and Penelope Lively, and, most recently, Elizabeth Strout. Joining their ranks is Australian Charlotte Wood, whose novel The Weekend conceives of old age as a state of mutiny rather than stasis, a period of constant striving against the world, but also against oneself ... What gives this novel its glorious, refreshing, forthright spine is that each of its protagonists is still adamantly (often disastrously) alive, and still less afraid of death than irrelevance.'
- Sara Collins, The Guardian 'An authentic, sometimes funny, occasionally brutally well-observed study of female society and friendship ... As with the novels of Elizabeth Strout or Anne Tyler, these are characters not written to please, but to feel true.' - Patricia Nicol, The Sunday Times 'The Weekend captivated me from the excellent opening chapter ... Wood evocatively captures the pasts of these resilient women, and her novel shines with rich symbolism, deft shifts in viewpoint and acutely observed details ... This wise, funny novel will help you understand yourself.' ★★★★★ - Martin Chilton, The Independent 'The gaps between how a character sees themselves and how their friends see them are astutely drawn, both painfully comic and frequently heartbreaking ... Wood is to be praised for taking female friendship seriously and for being caustically honest – there’s not a sentimental line in this beautifully insightful book.' - Holly Williams, The Observer |
"Sharp, funny, beautiful."
- Helen Garner "Faultless cultural vivisection ... The Weekend exposes the pitiful flimsiness of our cliches with the simple (yet radical) act of fore-fronting well-written septuagenarian women." - Beejay Silcox, The Weekend Australian "The most lovingly precise and insightful and funny and sad examination of female friendship ... she has absolutely nailed it. It’s a great, great book.” - Annabel Crabb, Chat 10 Looks 3 'Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. This is Wood’s greatest novel yet, and that’s saying something considering its predecessors.' - Stephen Romei, Literary Editor, The Australian 'This is a mightily accomplished work. Wood has created an intricate evocation of these anxious lives. Her central preoccupation are the questions: What have I lived for? What have I done with my one precious life?' - Helen Elliott, The Monthly "This richly textured novel is about so many things that it’s hard to do justice to all of them. Ideas about friendship, ageing and grief keep sliding kaleidoscopically in and out of focus. But there’s something even deeper going on, something about existence itself, that circles around the ancient dog Finn. ... Wood’s technique in this novel is masterly." - Kerryn Goldsworthy, The Sydney Morning Herald |
NEWS, EVENTS, LATEST MEDIATIMES RADIO UK
Charlotte interviewed by Mariella Frostrup (19 mins) THE SUNDAY TIMES INTERVIEW Charlotte Wood profiled by Patricia Nicol AUSTRALIAN BOOK INDUSTRY AWARD Winner, 2020 Literary Fiction Book of the Year: The Weekend AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE SOCIETY GOLD MEDAL Shortlisted, The Weekend STELLA PRIZE Shortlisted, The Weekend NEW WRITING |
@CHARLOTTEWOODWRITER ON INSTAGRAM
THE WRITER'S ROOM PODCAST: EPISODE 6 |