The Weekend: A Novel
Description
#1 International Bestseller
Shortlisted for the 2020 Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award * Shortlisted for the Stella Prize 2020 * Longlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Award
“The Big Chill with a dash of Big Little Lies . . . Knife-sharp and deeply alive.” —The Guardian (London)
“An insightful, poignant, and fiercely honest novel about female friendship and female aging.” —Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award–winning author of The Friend
“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, author of The Girl on the Train
Three women in their seventies reunite for one last, life-changing weekend in the beach house of their late friend.
Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank, and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three.
They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur; Wendy, an acclaimed public intellectual; and Adele, a renowned actress now mostly out of work. Struggling to recall exactly why they’ve remained close all these years, the grieving women gather at Sylvie’s old beach house—not for festivities this time, but to clean it out before it is sold. Can they survive together without her?
Without Sylvie to maintain the group’s delicate equilibrium, frustrations build and painful memories press in. Fraying tempers, an elderly dog, unwelcome guests, and too much wine collide in a storm that brings long-buried hurts to the surface—and threatens to sweep away their friendship for good.
The Weekend explores growing old and growing up, and what happens when we’re forced to uncover the lies we tell ourselves. Sharply observed and excruciatingly funny, this is a jewel of a book: a celebration of tenderness and friendship from an award-winning writer.
Praise for The Weekend: A Novel
Praise for The Weekend:
“A lovely, insightful exploration of aging, regrets and rebirth.” —People
“Wood has several surprises up her sleeve; her characters have loved often, lived large and taken plenty of risks, which makes for quick, Liane Moriarty-esque reading. She also has an eye for the little moments that link us, sometimes past the point of reason, to people whose histories we share.” —The New York Times
“If you’ve ever thought to yourself, I wish there were a beach read kind of like the movie Book Club, but more emotionally complex—look no further.” —Entertainment Weekly
“The Weekend is a bittersweet celebration of growing old together and an exploration of how complicated female friendships are.” —HelloGiggles
“[A] dark, smart comedy of manners . . . For a reader in or facing the demographic of Wood’s three friends, The Weekend is both fascinating and chilling. Not just the question of superannuated friendships, but also past-prime careers, aging bodies, senior finances and calcifying personality traits are all fairly coldly examined here. . . .” —Star Tribune
“Old age is a state of mutiny rather than stasis in this glorious, forthright tale of female friendship. . . . What gives the book its glorious, refreshing, forthright spine is that each woman is still adamantly (often disastrously) alive, and still less afraid of death than irrelevance.” —The Guardian (London)
“Capture summer (even if you can't leave your house) with a tender read dripping in easy nostalgia.” —Marie Claire
“The Weekend captivated me from the excellent opening chapter. . . . The three main characters—Jude, Adele and Wendy—are superbly drawn. . . . his wise, funny novel will help you understand yourself—and it may scare the s*** out of anyone brave enough to confront the truths within its masterful pages.” —The Independent (London)
“Wood finds a beautiful balance between her three women, swivelling between their perspectives on the present and their shared past. 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.” —The Observer (London)
“Three seventy-something women spend Christmas together and find new tensions in their long friendship. With the lightest of touches, this big-hearted, insightful read tackles friendship, ambition, aging and death.” —Good Housekeeping
“A darkly funny, truthful novel . . . There is endless pleasure to be found in the candor and compassion Wood brings to bear on femininity and female friendship.” —Metro (UK)
“A lovely, lively, intelligent, funny book . . . So good on aging and on the fraught, warm friendships between women.” —Tessa Hadley, author of The Past
“I found reading The Weekend both hypnotic and profoundly unsettling. 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. Masterful.” —Rosamund Lupton, author of Sister and Three Hours
“The Weekend positively hums with life even as these three women are approaching the end of theirs. The book is exquisitely wrenching and poignant when dealing with female friendship and old age, yet it still manages to be funny and very real.” —Claire Fuller, author of Our Endless Numbered Days
“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, #1 The New York Times–bestselling author of The Girl on the Train
“An insightful, poignant, and fiercely honest novel about female friendship and female aging.” —Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award–winning author of The Friend
“The Weekend is more Big Chill. . . . with a dash of Big Little Lies . . . A novel about decluttering and real estate, about the geometry of friendship, about sexual politics, and about how we change.” —The Guardian (London)
“The Weekend is an unflinchingly observed celebration of the profundity and mundanity of friendship, treated with elegance, wit, and tenderness.” —Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies
“Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.” —The Australian (Sydney)
“Wood’s technique in this novel is masterly.” —The Sydney Morning Herald
“One of the best novels of the year.” —The Saturday Paper (Australia)
