Staunch

Description

'A fun and uplifting memoir' Cosmopolitan Eleanor finds herself in her late 30s on a beach in India with three old ladies, trying to 'find herself' and 'discover her family history' like some sad middle-class crisis cliche. How did she get here? Truthfully, it could be for any one of the below reasons, if not all combined: * Stepmum dying/Stepdad leaving - family falling apart, subsequent psychotic break; both parents now on third marriage * Breaking up with K after 12 years - breaking up a whole life, a whole fucking universe - for reasons that may have been... misguided? * New boyfriend moving in immediately, me insisting 'it's not a rebound!' even after everyone has stopped listening, then breaking up with me * Going into therapy after dating a threatening narcissist (the most pertinent point of which should be noted: I did not break up with him - he ghosted me) How to address this situation? Take a trip to India with your octogenarian nan and two great aunts of course. The perfect, if somewhat unusual, distraction from Eleanor's ongoing crisis. But the trip offers so much more than Eleanor could ever have hoped for. Through the vivid and worldly older women in her life, she learns what it means to be staunch in the face of true adversity.

Eleanor Wood is the author of YA novels My Secret Rockstar Boyfriend and Becoming Betty. She lives in Brighton, where she can mostly be found hanging around in cafes and record shops, running on the beach, pretending to be French and/or that it's the 60s, and writing deep into the night. Her 'dayjob' is in academic publishing, and her work has previously been published in magazines such as Elle, Time Out and The Face.

'A fun and uplifting memoir' Cosmopolitan 'Warm and funny and unpretentious and wise.' Holly Bourne, author of Am I Normal Yet? 'Laced with many laugh-out-loud moments' The Sunday Post