The Answer to Everything

A heartbreakingly moving and hilariously funny novel about marriage, parenting, love, desire and betrayal.

‘Captivating’ Ruth Jones, author of Us Three ‘Tremendous’ William Boyd author of Any Human Heart ‘Funny, wry, unsettling’ Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the Fall

Emily should be happy. She has a nice husband (even if they rarely speak to each other, let alone sleep in the same bed), two little boys she loves (even if a full night’s sleep is a distant memory) – and now, a brand-new house in which they can live out all of the bourgeois fantasies she knows she should be ashamed of. But still she aches for something more.

Enter Alathea and Elliott, their new neighbours, and also parents of two young boys. Alathea is intimidatingly confident and beautiful, but also disarmingly open and friendly. And Elliott … Elliott is intriguing. Dishevelled, talented, charming and a little lost, he seems as fascinated by Emily as she is by him, and soon their friendship has reached an intensity neither of them seem able to control.

As riotously funny as it is painfully moving, this is a novel about disappointment and yearning; about parenting and growing up; and the search for love, meaning and connection.