The Frank Business: The smart and witty new novel of love and other battlefields

Olivia Glazebrook

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'A talented, witty writer with a sharp eye for social observation' Daily Mail

After Frank drops down dead in Heathrow Arrivals on Christmas Eve, his estranged daughter Jem is called in to identify the body. When Jem travels back to Frank's house in France - a house she hasn't been in since she was a child - she realises that Frank had a son too.

Frank has died of a congenital heart defect, a defect he may have passed on to his daughter - or on to his son. Jem must warn her brother, but in finding herself a family she risks ripping another apart.

Shrewd, witty and poignant, The Frank Business is a vivid tale of love and other battlefields.

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Praise for The Frank Business

  • I sank into the book, and looked forward to diving back into its world each time I was away from it . . . Olivia Glazebrook's writing has a lovely, fluid rhythm, and she writes with insight and candour about complex family dynamics, and the ways in which we love and hurt each other - Laura BarnettOlivia Glazebrook nails the complexity of family dynamics with sharp, witty writing - Good HousekeepingShe has the ability, like Anita Shreve or Maggie O'Farrell, to scrutinise and describe complex family dynamics with forensic precision - The SpectatorA talented, witty writer with a sharp eye for social observation - Daily MailSecrets and lies work well in stories of family fractures and affairs of the heart, and Glazebrook extends this to the false narratives we often need to tell ourselves to make our actions more palatable - truths we bury or expunge from our memories. There are some gleaming moments of dark humour and droll dialogue, with an undercurrent of fatalism like an invisible director, as characters are forced into certain roles: an absorbing, psychologically agile novel - Irish Times[A] finely written and very English novel . . . The plotting and interweaving of narrative lines are worthy of Jane Austen particularly in the intricate tying up of loose ends for all the main characters . . . Characters are drawn with insight, humanity, and humour . . . There is a droll wit at work throughout with close verbal attention . . . Glazebrook writes with a literary style but is not above being very entertaining . . . Glazebrook delves into the full drawn characters and in particular the bitter twists their lives can take, but it is a sweet, sweet read - Irish Examiner

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Olivia Glazebrook

Olivia Glazebrook

Olivia Glazebrook was born in 1976 and brought up in Dorset. She studied English Literature at University College London and has written as a journalist, screenwriter, film critic and book critic for fifteen years. The Trouble With Alice is her first novel. She lives in West London.

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