'A short, quietly devastating novel about our failings and how we cope; if you can imagine an Anne Tyler or Carol Shields novel about an outsize lesbian bus driver and the ordinary complexity of the second family love draws around her you’re close to what Ellen Hawley achieves here' - Patrick Gale

OTHER PEOPLE MANAGE - DON'T THEY?

It’s the late 70s when Marge meets Peg at the Women’s Coffee House, which is less a place to drink coffee than a place where two women can dance together safely. Who knows what draws people to each other? It's the right time. They're the right people.

For the next twenty years, they stay together, through the challenges any couple faces and the ones no one expects: a three-night stand refuses to stop standing, threatening to destroy the relationship almost before it starts. Peg's sister abandons her children, leaving the family to fill in as best they can. With everyday heroism, they do their best with what they’ve got.

Then one day things change, and Marge has to work out what she’s left with – and if she still belongs to the family she's adopted as her own.

Other People Manage is a novel of great wisdom but light touch about love and loss and family – and how to survive them all.