Jessica Andrews

From the author of the award-winning Saltwater comes an intimate love story about desire and shame

Diamond Jackson has always been told she is a diamond in the rough, but she never felt that way. Oftentimes, she felt unworthy of such a beautiful name. It came with expectations that she just couldn't meet. Diamond never wanted to play the victim role, but she is more than comfortable playing the invisible role. Diamond never realized how much she longed for acceptance, friendship, and love. Like many young women, she knew she had a deep longing for real love but Diamond didn't understand that there is really a thin line between love and hate. Reflecting on her past, Diamond discovers how broken she really is and leans on her faith in God to mend her brokenness. This, too, shall pass, she would often remind herself, but the passing just felt like torture and defeat. Nonetheless, a little part of Diamond believed the pressures of life would create a beautiful diamond in the rough. She had to believe... Faith

A Best Book of 2020: Open Letters Review "Andrews's writing is transportingly voluptuous, conjuring tastes and smells and sounds like her literary godmother, Edna O'Brien . . . What makes her novel sing is its universal themes: how a young woman tries to make sense of her world, and how she grows up."--Penelope Green, The New York Times Book ReviewThis "luminous" (The Observer) feminist coming-of-age novel captures in sensuous, blistering prose the richness and imperfection of the bond between a daughter and her mother It begins with our bodies . . . Safe together in the violet dark and yet already there are spaces beginning to open between us. From that first immaculate, fluid connection, through the ups and downs of a working-class childhood in northern England, the one constant in Lucy's life has been her mother: comforting and mysterious, ferociously loving, tirelessly devoted, as much a part of Lucy as her own skin. Her mother's lessons in womanhood shape Lucy's appreciation for desire, her sense of duty as a caretaker, her hunger for a better, perhaps reckless life. At university in glamorous London, Lucy's background sets her apart. And then she is finished, graduated, adrift. She escapes to a tiny house in Donegal left empty by her grandfather, a place where her mother once found happiness. There she will take a lover, live inside art and the past, and track back through her memories and her mother's stories to make sense of her place in the world. In "a stunning new voice in British literary fiction" (The Independent) that lays bare our raw, dark selves, Jessica Andrews's debut honors the richness and imperfection of the bond between a daughter and her mother. Intricately woven in lyrical vignettes, Saltwater is a novel of becoming--a woman, an artist--and of finding a way forward by looking back.

WINNER OF THE PORTICO PRIZE 'A distinctive new voice for fans of 'Fleabag' or Sally Rooney' Independent'Raw, intimate and authentic' The Sunday Times'Gorgeous . . . Andrews's writing is transportingly voluptuous, conjuring tastes and smells and sounds like her literary godmother, Edna O'Brien.' New York TimesWhen Lucy wins a place at university, she thinks London will unlock her future. It is a city alive with pop up bars, cool girls and neon lights illuminating the Thames at night. At least this is what Lucy expects, having grown up seemingly a world away in working-class Sunderland, amid legendary family stories of Irish immigrants and boarding houses, now defunct ice rinks and an engagement ring at a fish market. Yet Lucy's transition to a new life is more overwhelming than she ever expected. As she works long shifts to make ends meet and navigates chaotic parties from East London warehouses to South Kensington mansions, she still feels like an outsider among her fellow students. When things come to a head at her graduation, Lucy takes off for Ireland, seeking solace in her late grandfather's cottage and the wild landscape that surrounds it, wondering if she can piece together who she really is. Lyrical and boundary-breaking, Saltwater explores the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, the challenges of shifting class identity and the way that the strongest feelings of love can be the hardest to define.'Luminous' Observer'Lyrically poetic' Evening Standard'Disarmingly honest . . . I wish I had read this when I was 19.' Guardian

The original Northern Powerhouse, Newcastle upon Tyne has witnessed countless transformations over the last century or so, from its industrial heyday, when Tyneside engineering and innovation led the world, through decades of post-industrial decline, and underinvestment, to its more recent reinvention as a cultural destination for the North. The ten short stories gathered here all feature characters in search of something, a new reality, a space, perhaps, in which to rediscover themselves: from the call-centre worker imagining herself far away from the claustrophobic realities of her day job, to the woman coming to terms with an ex-lover who’s moved on all too quickly, to the man trying to outrun his mother’s death on Town Moor. The Book of Newcastle brings together some of the city’s most renowned literary talents, along with exciting new voices, proving that while Newcastle continues to feel the effects of its lost industrial past, it is also a city striving for a future that brims with promise.