Indie Bookshop Week: Penguin authors celebrate their favourites

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Independent Bookshop Week: Penguin authors celebrate their favourites

8 empowering books about living through loss

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Reading lists

The Museum of You

This summer, Clover Quinn wants to find the missing pieces of her story.

Carys Bray's words are filled with the most incredible tenderness and wisdom, and every character is so rich, they each become a story in their own right. The Museum of You is beautiful and clever, and honest. I loved every moment of it

Joanna Cannon, author of THE TROUBLE WITH GOATS AND SHEEP

Wonderfully honest and moving ... communicates with skill the overwhelming power of loss through the mouths of ordinary people in ordinary situations, making her observations all the richer

It is funny, earthy, truthful; and beyond that, it is bold … [Clover] is an utterly convincing child, an optimistic realist … her story and hinterland come to life with exceptional energy.

The Museum of You had me laughing, weeping and reading late into the night ... poignant and uplifting ... it's a confident second novel that never strays far from real life - and one that assures her a very bright future

In less skilful hands, this could easily become mawkish or sentimental. But Bray’s talent is her understated emotion and wry humour … it is in the relationships between parents and children that Bray’s prose becomes luminescent … Wise, moving and tender, [The Museum of You] confirms Bray as a perceptive and sensitive storyteller

Poetically and sensitively written ... the main theme - the instinctive aspiration and optimism of children - is an uplifting one

A beautifully written tale of loss, love and handwritten exhibition labels

Packed with a wonderfully drawn cast of eccentric neighbours and friends who make up their extended family, Bray spins a witty and tender story from this quirky starting point. The power of memory, the impact of grief and the importance of family are all explored as slowly revealed secrets intensify the novel’s emotional punch.

Tender and touching, Bray gets to the heart of how grief can stunt and stall lives.

A heartwarmingly beautiful story and an absolute joy of a novel. Five stars just doesn’t seem enough.

A poignant story of a father and daughter relationship.

A beautifully written and emotionally insightful coming-of-age tale

Carys Bray was awarded the Scott Prize for her debut short-story collection, Sweet Home. Her first novel, A Song for Issy Bradley, was chosen for Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and winner of the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2015. She lives in Southport with her husband and four children.

Clover Quinn was a surprise. She used to imagine she was the good kind, now she’s not sure. She’d like to ask Dad about it, but growing up in the saddest chapter of someone else’s story is difficult. She tries not to skate on the thin ice of his memories. 
 
Darren has done his best. He's studied his daughter like a seismologist on the lookout for waves and surrounded her with everything she might want - everything he can think of, at least - to be happy. 
 
What Clover wants is answers. This summer, she thinks she can find them in the second bedroom, which is full of her mother's belongings. Volume isn't important, what she is looking for is essence; the undiluted bits: a collection of things that will tell the full story of her mother, her father and who she is going to be. 
 
But what you find depends on what you're searching for.

Sweet Home

The award-winning short story collection from the author of A Song for Issy Bradley, shortlisted for the COSTA First Novel Prize 2015.

Accomplished, moving and unnerving, Sweet Home is a tour de force.

Shades of Angela Carter colour Bray's title story while Fay Weldon and Jane Gardam are godmothers to Bray's fiction, bringing gifts of satire and observation that can prick and draw blood.

[Bray] explores parenthood, loss, childhood and belonging with razor-sharp prose, a killer eye for stop-you-in-your-tracks detail and a real understanding of the hidden cruelties and unexpectedly sharp comforts of family life

Jenn Ashworth, author of The Friday Gospels

Suburbia in all its tarnished glory - Carys Bray teases at the cracks, and pulls at the loose threads dangling, in short stories that are funny sad and achingly true

They say there's no place like home. It's where the heart is... 
 
Meet the little boy who believes in miracles. 
 
Meet the mother who loves to bring babies home from the newborn aisle of her supermarket. 
 
Meet the husband who carves a longed-for baby out of ice as a gift for his wife. 
 
Meet the widow who is reminded of romance whilst pegging out the washing. 
 
Awarded the Scott Prize for short story writing, Sweet Home weaves together moments of joy, heartache, sadness and unwavering love as told through seventeen very different notions of home.

A Song for Issy Bradley

A moving, powerful and ultimately uplifting story about a family coming to terms with the loss of a child for fans of The Shock of the Fall and Me Before You.

I cannot remember a time when a novel has seduced me so completely . . . Bray writes with such clarity, intelligence and authenticity that it feels as if a trusted old friend is telling you the story, that the characters are people you know.

Wonderful ... heartbreaking, compassionate and funny.

Bray explores the healing power of religion with rare assurance in one of the year's most impressive debuts.

Bray brings humour, empathy and knowledge to what is fundamentally a novel about grief and faith ... Read this if you like: Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You.

I loved this tender, moving, funny and deeply truthful story about a family and a faith tested to breaking-point.

A brilliant debut, compelling and profoundly moving.

Nathan Filer, Costa winner of THE SHOCK OF THE FALL

A terrific book . . .  I loved A SONG FOR ISSY BRADLEY ... it’s moving and comforting in a way that makes sense even to the agnostic.

unique . . . beautifully written . . . powerful

Bray slips with thoroughness, imagination and dexterity into each of the characters' consciousness . . . [She] is wincingly honest and emotions are portrayed with an assurance that comes from understanding . . . A Song for Issy Bradley is a skilful and empathetic dramatisation. The fact that it deals with such distressing subject matter without falling prey to sentimentality makes it all the more admirable . . . There are some wonderful one-liners . . .Bray's greatest gift, however, is understatement.

Happy the debut novelist who can write well but who also has access to extraordinary subject matter. This is an impressive debut from a compassionate, wise and original new voice.

Bray performs a small miracle of her own by inhabiting each family member at every stage of the tragedy as their doubts and fears creep in . . . [and] manages it with an astonishing lightness of touch . . . A stunning, unmissable debut.

While this debut is heart-rendingly poignant with a bleak tragedy at its heart, it's also funny and vividly written.

I loved A SONG FOR ISSY BRADLEY: such courage, warmth and intelligence. Carys Bray sweetly and subtly breaks your heart. It's an incredible debut.

Charlotte Mendelson, author of Booker-longlisted ALMOST ENGLISH and Orange Prize-shortlisted, WHEN WE WERE BAD

Such strong writing, with so much fine imagery . . . very moving. It sings. The characters are completely believable and their grief is conveyed with a truly admirable, unsentimental lightness of touch, which brought laughter between the tears.

Emma Henderson, author of Orange-shortlisted GRACE WILLIAMS SAYS IT LOUD

In places it is devastating, but it is also unexpectedly funny, even joyful, a hugely impressive novel about what it means to grieve – and to be part of a family.

I was hooked by this beadily observed and moving portrayal of grief, doubt and faith.

Uncontrollable bawling on public transport alert! … Deeply effecting… A seriously impressive debut

WINNER OF THE AUTHORS' CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2015 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2015 AND THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2015 
 
Meet the Bradleys. 
 
In lots of ways, they’re a normal family: 
Zippy is sixteen and in love for the first time; Al is thirteen and dreams of playing for Liverpool. 
 
And in some ways, they’re a bit different: 
Seven-year-old Jacob believes in miracles. So does his dad. 
 
But these days their mum doesn’t believe in anything, not even getting out of bed. 
 
How does life go on, now that Issy is gone?

Carys Bray

One of the best things you'll read: warm, witty and wise.

Carys Bray writes with a quiet formidable brilliance. Her observations on relationships are acute, painful and extremely funny. This is a gem of a book.

Bray is brilliant in her explorations of the delicate ecosystem of a long marriage.

Bray has a knack of dealing with weighty themes with the lightest of touches.

It's a fresh, topical perspective, told expertly by Bray ... When the Lights Go Out ultimately asks a pertinent question: what does it mean to be good, or happy, or prepared, and which of these is most important? In the end, Bray's characters are forced to accept that they don't know - which, in this age of social media-heightened political division that seems to encourage dogmatism, is a welcome tonic.

Testing Christian ethics against post-religious eco-panic in a picturesque English novel makes this an unusual and fascinating read. At first it seems like a simple domestic dramedy about a grumpy husband and his eye-rolling wife. But Bray is on a real philosophical quest here and, in common with all great writers, isn't afraid to have her characters say clever things and get into unusual situations. There is no whimsy here. No cheap, easy imagery (crows, I'm talking about you). This is a powerful and truthful story about hope and how to find it. Eschatology with rabbits and needlecraft. It's intelligent, truly timely and subtly reassuring.

Bray's satire shines with observation and subtlety . . . With sharp wit, Bray teases out the tiny domestic dramas, identifying the pinch points that can make the most solid relationships briefly or permanently unendurable. Bray shows how the most well-regulated household can still tremble on the brink of collapse. What message could be more timely than that?

Beautifully-written ... superb on family dynamics.

It's bleak and it's laugh-out-loud funny, and just how Bray balances a book along that fine line is a wonderful skill.

When the Lights Go Out is a triumph. Richly metaphorical, impeccably dramatised, beautifully plotted, and so lifelike it seems to lift off the page . . . It has voices: Milton, Shakespeare, Keats, Edgar Alan Poe, Dylan Thomas and the Bible. It has ghosts: of Eden, Job, the Flood and Judgement Day. It has Christmas carols, closing down notices, protest slogans and commandments written in stone. It takes place at a tangent to the world we currently inhabit and we wake from reading it as if from a dream. The dream is that the world is ending and we are in need of a miracle. The book is a small miracle itself. Carys Bray has given us a perfect example of how to write a novel.

In a literary landscape in which cultural and political "timeliness" too often trumps artistry, it is a relief to discover there are still novels being written that confront the great questions of the day with nuance, skill and artistry.

When the Lights Go Out is absolutely superb. So timely, and so deeply human, a novel which takes us right into the heart of a marriage and at the same time grapples with the most crucial issue of our age. It's bursting with compassion and wisdom - I felt for these characters every step of the way.

Carys Bray is extraordinarily skilled at creating characters who feel like they might live down the road from you. Through exquisite use of language and observation, she examines the intricacies of family life in ways which have you laughing one moment and biting your nails with worry the next.

A sharply observed, deftly told tale of rupture and repair. In it, with characteristic wit and humanity, Bray shows us the necessity and the impossibility of preparing for disaster, and reminds us of both the fragility and capacity of love.

Jenn Ashworth, author of A KIND OF INTIMACY and FELL

A beautifully realised story of a family falling apart under the pressures of our age.

Warm, witty and well worth your time.

A joy to read [...] her writing is really smart. The family's interactions are so well observed.

Bray's third novel is the finely drawn story of a marriage on the skids and a nuanced appraisal of the variegated impacts of climate change.

A very funny book . . . prescient and poignant . . . [with] a believable and moving climax to a novel that captures the paranoia of our times.

Propulsive, penetrating new novel about race, class, and climate change.

A tremendously witty and enjoyable read

'A powerful and truthful story about hope and how to find it' The Times 
'A gem of a book' Emily Maitlis 
 
Emma's husband Chris is fretting about starvation and societal collapse. He's turned off the heating and is stockpiling off-label medicines and tins of baked beans. 
 
Chris, certain that society will soon spiral to its doom, finds Emma's optimism exasperating. Emma finds Chris's obsession with disaster relentless. She's beginning to wonder whether relationships, like mortgages, should be conducted in five-year increments. But when Chris's mother turns up for a visit, the cracks begin to show. Will Emma and Chris be able to find their way back to each other?

Carys Bray

Praise for When the Lights Go Out

One of the best things you'll read: warm, witty and wise.

Carys Bray writes with a quiet formidable brilliance. Her observations on relationships are acute, painful and extremely funny. This is a gem of a book.

Bray is brilliant in her explorations of the delicate ecosystem of a long marriage.

One of the best things you'll read: warm, witty and wise.

Carys Bray writes with a quiet formidable brilliance. Her observations on relationships are acute, painful and extremely funny. This is a gem of a book.

Bray is brilliant in her explorations of the delicate ecosystem of a long marriage.

One of the best things you'll read: warm, witty and wise.

Carys Bray writes with a quiet formidable brilliance. Her observations on relationships are acute, painful and extremely funny. This is a gem of a book.

Bray is brilliant in her explorations of the delicate ecosystem of a long marriage.

Books by Carys Bray

Articles featuring Carys Bray

Independent Bookshop Week: Penguin authors celebrate their favourites

8 empowering books about living through loss

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