Chosen Family
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Orion Publishing Co
Publishing:29th Jan '26
£20.00
This title is due to be published on 29th January, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
'MADELEINE GRAY IS A DAZZLING WRITER - A HUGE TALENT'
GILLIAN ANDERSON
Nell has accepted, at age twelve, that hers will likely be a friendless existence. She does not care for boys, or makeup, or competing to see who can eat the least - so has no hope of success at tweenage girl social climbing.
But then, a new girl arrives at school. Eve has short hair like a boy's, a wicked sense of humour and an unshakable confidence that she will one day find her place in the world. The moment they meet, Nell changes her mind about the friend thing.
From their childhood to their twenties and thirties, Eve and Nell will love each other and hurt each other - through teenage feuds and the chlorine-scented savagery of all-girls' schools; through long, drunken nights in scruffy share houses; through the highs and lows of coparenting a child together without being romantically involved. But always, despite a mire of unspoken feelings and sexual confusion, they will choose each other. Again, and again. As friends, as lovers, as family.
Chosen Family felt like being welcomed into a world full of in-jokes, drama, comfort, chaos and love - I was completely in its thrall until the very last page. Madeleine Gray has written something very special: an epic story of female intimacy that is gripping, poignant, extremely funny and bracingly true -- Lisa Owens, author of Not Working
I laughed, I cried, I fell in love with Chosen Family. Beautiful, devastating, hilarious and full of life -- Jessica Stanley, author of Consider Yourself Kissed
Hilarious and devastating. I was caught in the Medusa's gaze of Chosen Family. This book is everything to me -- Siang Lu, author of Ghost Cities
I loved Chosen Family's capacious heart, and the vivacious kick of its language. Gray's generosity to her characters doesn't preclude a tough, comic astringency when it comes to revealing the foibles and posturing of her characters. Yet the mocking is never cruel: this is a novel that has a lot to say about the nature of love and of friendship. And just as importantly, a lot to say about the nature of desire and friendship. I started reading and couldn't stop till I reached the final page. It is joyously good -- Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap
This novel is an X-ray of the savage and terrified minds of teenage girls. Even once we're moving through adulthood, do those snarling younger selves stay trapped inside somewhere? Chosen Family is about two people reaching for love despite being burned by the world and each other. Gray is pulling all the strings: funny, devastating, shocking, heartbreaking -- Bri Lee, author of Seed
In Chosen Family, Madeleine Gray skilfully picks apart the ties that bind us, the ones that break and the ones that can be sewn back together. Told with Gray's inimitable wit and verve, this is a story of queer love betrayal forgiveness sex family and above all friendship, in all its gory glory. Chosen Family has it all -- Dominic Amerena, author of I Want Everything
I inhaled this book, holding my breath at passages that felt ripped straight from my high school diary in 2007 . . . Madeleine Gray makes real the humiliation and exhilaration of teenage girlhood, and the ways it shapes the women, partners and parents we become -- Lucinda Price, author of All I Ever Wanted Was to Be Hot
ISBN: 9781399636957
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
368 pages