The Friday Gospels
The Friday Gospels
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Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton General Division
ISBN: 9781444707748
Number of Pages: 336
Published: 18/07/2013
Width: 12.8 cm
Height: 19.6 cm
It's Friday in the Leeke household, but this is no ordinary Friday: the Leekes are Lancastrian Mormons and tonight they will be welcoming back their son Gary from his two-year mission in Utah. His mother, Pauline, wants his homecoming to be perfect. Unfortunately, no one else seems to be following the script. In turn, the members of the family let us into their private thoughts and plans. There's teenage Jeannie, wrestling with a disastrous secret; her peculiar elder brother, Julian, who's plotting an exit according to his own warped logic; their father, Martin, dreaming of escape; and 'golden boy' Gary, who dreads his return. Then there's Pauline, who needs a doctor's help but won't ask for it. As the day progresses, a meltdown looms. Except that nothing goes according to anyone's plan, and the outcome is as unexpected as it is shocking. Laced with black humour and giving an unusual insight into the Mormon way of life, this is a superbly orchestrated and arresting tale of human folly and foibles and what counts in times of crisis.
Utterly, compulsively readable, [it] could be this award-winning young author's best novel yet. The Sunday Times A serious, distinctive and eminently readable story of faith and family; about the demands of the world and the desires of the individual. Independent on Sunday Ashworth's most confident work yet and one that strengthens her reputation as an author worth watching. Sunday Telegraph A serious novel seriously engaged with big themes. It is also very funny. Andrew Miller, author of PURE It is rare to find a novel that is so complex, so damn clever and yet at once readable... a truly exceptional novel. Helen Walsh, author of BRASS Jenn Ashworth's The Friday Gospels will make a nicely unsettling poolside read. Brought up in a Mormon family, here she turns her fictional talents to the Church of Latter-day Saints, both its dark and its hilarious sides. -- Mary Beard, Summer Reads Observer Grim and comic in equal measures, this is an acutely observer account of growing up as a Latter-day Saint in Lancashire Observer Ashworth's darkly comic third novel concerns the unravelling of a close-knit Mormon family in Lancashire, and evolves into a sympathetic, forgiving and absorbing portrait of family life. Daily Telegraph
