'TRULY REMARKABLE, HILARIOUS, A TRIUMPH' EMMA THOMPSON

'ABSOLUTE HEAVEN' INDIA KNIGHT

The debut novel from the Sunday Times-bestselling author of Why did you stay?

‘Pour yourself a drink, put on your lipstick, and pull yourself together.’ Constance released her grip from her daughter’s face. ‘Elizabeth Taylor.’

It was the closest she’d ever come to saying ‘I love you’ .

For decades, the St Julian’s amateur dramatics society has been a place for show-offs to meet, drink tea, put on plays – and establish a very clear hierarchy that everyone pretends doesn’t exist. And the unspoken star of its flock-wallpapered halls? Regina Edwards, daughter of St Julians’s iconic, longest-serving prima donna Constance and mother to quiet and stage-shy Maisie.

Regina is determined to live up to Constance’s memory, a critical and exacting woman who played ingenues well into her final years, while Maisie is happy to applaud from the sidelines. But it is Maisie and not Regina who is cast as the ingenue role in a (somewhat ambitiously chosen) Christmas run of The Crucible, and so Regina’s devotion to her daughter is tested to its limits. Regina loves Maisie and Maisie loves Regina…but seemingly possessed by the spirit of her ruthless dead mother, Regina sets about trying to bring her daughter down for good.

A love letter to mothers, daughters and the deranged joys of local community theatre, Maiden Mother Crone wrestles with curses both literal and metaphorical and, perhaps even more terrifyingly, the impossible ageing standards of our day.