{"title":"Books by Rose Ruane","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781472158000","title":"Birding","description":"'If you're heading to a British seaside town this summer, the book you should take with you is Birding by Rose Ruane . . . Ruane is a marvellous writer whose prose glitters with perfect metaphors and wincingly caustic one-liners. In fact you should take this on holiday wherever you're going' Jonathan Coe, Guardian'I have GULPED this novel down . . . Birding gave me everything I want in a novel, including a massive, cathartic cry at the end. Achingly poignant, yet ultimately hopeful, with a worn out seaside town I can see so clearly' Jennie Godfrey, author of The List of Suspicious Things'A beautiful book full of stark truths . . . Lyrical and evocative, highly recommended' Evie King, author of Ashes to Admin'I've had my socks absolutely knocked off (again) by Rose Ruane's latest novel Birding. It made me rage, reflect, howl with laughing, worry and blub. Gentle, strong, important and hopeful. I am in awe and couldn't recommend it more highly' Jessica Fostekew, writer, actor and co-host of The Guilty FeministIn the nineties, Lydia was one half of a teen pop group. Their image was sexy, edgy, girly yet 'in control'. The reality was very different. Now, thirty years later, with #MeToo revelations a daily reality, a famous ex-lover resurfaces with a slick, self-serving apology, demanding forgiveness. Suddenly, Lydia is overwhelmed with memories of a harmful time in her life that refuses to leave her in peace.   Meanwhile, Joyce has never left home and the suffocating grip of her mother, Betty. For decades their lives have intertwined, even wearing matching dresses and make-up, as they follow a rigid daily routine. A single misstep can send Betty spiralling, so Joyce stays inside the tracks. But something unfamiliar is rising inside Joyce - a whispered what if . . .   Against the faded backdrop of a once-grand seaside resort, Lydia and Joyce are trapped in worlds of their own making. But as they both confront their pasts - the toxic men, the forgotten dreams, the twisted expectations - fate is about to throw them together, as they wrestle with the question: Can we ever truly take flight on broken wings?","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57685836759413,"sku":"9781472157997","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":44203441946802,"sku":"9781472158000","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781472157997.jpg?v=1792599043"},{"product_id":"9781472154002","title":"This Is Yesterday","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e'This Is Yesterday\u003c\/i\u003e is a song for the outsiders, a hymn to the suburban misfits. Here the tensions and oddness of lower-middle class family life are explored in poetic detail . . . A voice of hope for those who boldly follow their own creative path from adolescence to middle age' Benjamin Myers, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Offing\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeach is alone and adrift in London's sprawl, with a stalled art career and an unhappiness she knows won't be cured by a boyfriend or baby. Then she gets a shocking phone call that brings her face to face with her fractured family, and sends her spiralling into her past, to a scorched summer years ago in 90s suburbia . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBack in 1994, Peach longs to flee the stifling nowhere that makes her a misfit. Hot listless days and sleepless drunken nights have awakened in her a latent, destructive curiosity; she haunts airless attics, unlocks sealed doors, pries into private affairs and finally unearths a secret that rips her family apart, disrupting everything and setting the course for the rest of her life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow, facing this new crisis, Peach and her sister set out to confront a past they have avoided for two decades and meet a future they have no idea how to navigate. \u003ci\u003eThis is Yesterday\u003c\/i\u003e is a book about beginnings and endings, about adolescence and ageing, failures, families, love and loneliness. It is the story of how the girls we once were shape the women we become.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301110362485,"sku":"9781472154002","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781472154002_54b16e3a-b90b-4a02-9711-9c356298f9a4.jpg?v=1786020407"},{"product_id":"a-little-island","title":"A Little Island","description":"A Little Island: this is how art therapist Edward Adamson described his groundbreaking art therapy studio at Netherne Hospital, a Surrey mental hospital, from 1946 onwards. Rose Ruane has served as chair of the Adamson Collection, steward of thousands of amazing works of art of all kinds created by the individuals compelled to live at Netherne. And in A Little Island, she uses a range of structure and form - prose pieces, erasures, ekphrastic poems and more - to describe and enter into the conflicted minds of women in dialogue with themselves.   More days pass. I sit by the window but there is no clock in the hours - winter bundles the hours off in a thick, grey felt and in here, the lights are on all day. I guess the time by the smell of meals; toast, soup, stew. By the changing shifts of nurses whose names I do not know. The trundling of the medicine cart. The wheels squeak like something small which is dying. Or maybe attempting to live.  A Little Island is a remarkable and human artpiece in itself: a unique work of witness and storytelling, vulnerable and enraging and beautiful, as Ruane conjures the real and radical voices of women from a seemingly distant past - and we hear highly contemporary experience reflected back at us.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57504838975861,"sku":"9781472161444","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-rose-ruane.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}