"Gripping - and profound... Kate Sawyer has a great gift for capturing the tiny details that tell us everything about a person or dynamic." -- Marian Keyes
"From its brilliant, ambitious premise (a story told through family holidays) to its complex and wholly absorbing characters, Getting Away is a moving insight into the beautiful complexity of ordinary lives." -- Jennie Godfrey
Margaret Smith is at the beach.
It is a summer day unlike any other Margaret has ever known.
The Smith family have left the town where they live and work and go to school and come to a place where the sky is blue, the sand is white, and the sound of the sea surrounds them. An ordinary family discovering the joy of getting away for the first time.
Over the course of the coming decades, they will be transformed through their holiday experiences, each new destination a backdrop as the family grows and changes, love stories begin and end -- and secrets are revealed.
Coming this summer, Getting Away is a dazzlingly ambitious new novel from the author of Waterstones' Fiction Book of the Month, This Family, and the Costa shortlisted The Stranding. Kate Sawyer worked as an actor and producer before writing several short films then turning her hand to fiction. Her second novel This Family was a Waterstones Book Of The Month and Paperback of the Year. Her debut, The Stranding, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, won the East Anglian Book Award for fiction, was adapted for BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and is being developed for the screen. Kate produces the annual Bury St Edmunds Literature Festival, in the Suffolk town she grew up in and returned to after the birth of her daughter. A dazzlingly ambitious new novel from the author of Waterstones' Fiction Book of the Month, This Family, and the Costa shortlisted The Stranding, Getting Away is the holiday read of a lifetime... AUTHOR ENDORSEMENTS: Blurbs are rolling in from a spread of commercial and literary authors including Marian Keyes, Jennifer Saint, Jennie Godfrey, Georgina Moore and many more to come. PRO-ACTIVE AND WELL-CONNECTED AUTHOR: Kate is Programme Curator for the Bury St Edmunds Literature Festival, hosts a podcast about writing and publishing, and works very hard travelling up and down the country befriending booksellers and championing other authors. She is great at events and content creation. PERFECT HOLIDAY READ: Set in various holiday locations from cycle tours of the South of France to Tuscan escapes, from Portugal timeshares to Orlando theme parks, from backpacking to fancy New York hotels, this is the holiday read of a lifetime. LOCAL CONNECTIONS AND FAMILY HISTORY: Kate is born and raised in East Anglia and very well connected with bookshops in this area. The book is inspired by her family history, coming from a Yorkshire working class background. Kate is happy to talk about how this inspired the book.
