Three women in their 70s - bruised by life, discarded by society, bursting with anger - reunite for one last, life-changing weekend.

Charlotte Wood zooms in and makes these women increasingly sympathetic and individual in a way that really pulls on the heartstrings of the reader' Mariella Frostrup

'What a terrific novel this is, I have enjoyed it enormously' Simon Mayo

'A lovely, lively, intelligent, funny book' Tessa Hadley

'Sharp, funny, heartbreaking and gorgeously-written, I loved it' Paula Hawkins

'One of those deceptively compact novels that continues to open doors in your mind long after the last page' Patrick Gale

'Unsparing observations and total lack of sentimentality' Eimear McBride

Sylvie, Jude, Wendy and Adele have a lifelong friendship of the best kind, but when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three,

These women couldn't be more different: Jude, a restaurateur with a long-standing affair with a married man; Wendy, an acclaimed feminist intellectual; Adele, a former star of the stage, Struggling to recall exactly why they've remained close all these years, the grieving women gather for one last weekend at Sylvie's old beach house - not for a celebration of her life, but to clean the place out before it is sold,

But amid the ruins of their relationship there are glimpses of the affection that has kept them together for years - and when disaster strikes their friendship will be the only thing keeping them alive,

I was also engaged by The Weekend (Orion, £14.99) by Charlotte Wood . It was refreshing to encounter a novel that so profoundly sympathises with women on the forbidding cusp of being classifi ed as "elderly".