The summer without men

'Some time after he said the word pause, I went mad and landed in the hospital. He did not say I don t ever want to see you again or It s over, but after thirty years of marriage pause was enough to turn me into a lunatic.'

When Mia Fredrickson learns that her husband is having an affair, she suffers a brief breakdown then retreats to her childhood town and her mother s embrace. Alone in a rented house, she rages and fumes and bemoans her sorry fate. Slowly, however, she is drawn into the lives of those around her: her mother and her close friends who face their twilight years with zest and in one case, playful subversion; her young neighbour with two small children and a loud angry husband; and the adolescent girls in her poetry workshop whose scheming and petty cruelty carry a threat all their own. Over the course of the summer, Mia gains a whole new perspective on her life.

By the internationally bestselling author of WHAT I LOVED, this a wonderfully witty, spirited and provocative novel about women and girls, love and marriage, and the so-called war of the sexes.