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A new Sunday Times bestseller from the author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry with a very different but equally unlikely and heartrending hero. A story of secrets, a terrible mistake, and the destructive nature of perfection.
‘It is her clever did-I-read-that-right twist at the end that really got to me and had me scrabbling through the chapters, open-mouthed.’ Evening Standard
Summer, 1972- In the claustrophobic heat, eleven-year-old Byron and his friend begin ‘Operation Perfect’, a hapless mission to rescue Byron’s mother from impending crisis.
Winter, present day- As frost creeps across the moor, Jim cleans tables in the local cafe, a solitary figure struggling with OCD. His job is a relief from the rituals that govern his nights.
Little would seem to connect them except that two seconds can change everything.
And if your world can be shattered in an instant, can time also put it right?
Author Biography
Rachel Joyce is the author of the Sunday Times and international bestsellers The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Perfect, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North, The Music Shop, Miss Benson’s Beetle, and a collection of interlinked short stories, A Snow Garden & Other Stories.
Rachel’s books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The critically acclaimed film of the novel, for which Rachel also wrote the screenplay, was released in 2023. Miss Benson’s Beetle won the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize in 2021. Rachel was awarded the Specsavers National Book Awards New Writer of the Year in December 2012 and was shortlisted for the UK Author of the Year in 2014. In 2024 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Kingston University.
Rachel has written over twenty original afternoon plays and adaptations of the classics for BBC Radio 4. She lives with her family near Stroud.
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