Joanna Nadin's first novel for adults, The Queen of Bloody Everything, is about mothers, daughters and how we can make many choices in life but can't choose where we come from.
As Edie Jones lies in a bed on the fourteenth floor of a Cambridge hospital, her adult daughter Dido tells their story, starting with the day that changed everything.
That was the day Dido - aged exactly six years and twenty-seven days old - met the handsome Tom Trevelyan, his precocious sister, Harry, and their parents, Angela and David.
The day Dido fell in love with a family completely different from her own.
Because the Trevelyans were exactly the kind of family Dido dreamed of.
They were normal.
And in that instant I fall in love. Not just with him, though he is the better part of it, but with them both, with the whole scene: the house, the garden, the magazine perfection of it. And I want very badly to be in this picture.
As Edie Jones lies in a bed on the fourteenth floor of a Cambridge hospital, her adult daughter Dido tells their story, starting with the day that changed everything.
That was the day when Dido - aged exactly six years and twenty-seven days old - met the handsome Tom Trevelyan, his precocious sister, Harry, and their parents, Angela and David.
The day Dido fell in love with a family completely different from her own.
Because the Trevelyans were exactly the kind of family six-year-old Dido dreamed of.
Normal.
And Dido's mother, Edie, doesn't do normal.
In fact, as Dido has learned the hard way, normal is the one thing Edie can never be . . .
