The Weekend

three lambs, each one its own conscious self, with its own senses, its intimate pleasures and pains. After a mouthful she could not go on, and Daniel ate the rest. She had wanted to say, I don't want to die.

Of course she did not say that. Instead she asked Daniel about the novel he was reading. William Maxwell, or William Trevor, she often confused the two. He was a good reader, Daniel. A true reader. Daniel laughed at men who did not read fiction, which was nearly all the men he knew. They were afraid of something in themselves, he said. Afraid of being shown up, of not understanding-or more likely the opposite: They would be led to understanding themselves, and it scared the shit out of them. Daniel snorted. They said they didn't have time for it, which was the biggest joke of all.

Jude pulled the sheet up to her chin. The day felt sticky already; the sheet was cool over her clammy body.

What would happen if she did not wake, one of these mornings? If she died one night in her bed? Nobody would know. Days would pass. Eventually Daniel would call and get no answer. Then what? They had never discussed this: what to do if she died in her bed.

Last Christmas, Sylvie was here, and this one she wasn't-and now they were going to clear out the house at Bittoes. Take anything you want, Gail had said to them from Dublin in an e-mail. Have a holiday. How you could think cleaning your dead friend's house a holiday . . . but it was Christmas, and Gail felt guilty for flitting off back to Ireland and leaving it to them. So. Take anything you want.

There was nothing Jude wanted. She couldn't speak for the others.

Sylvie had been in the ground for eleven months.

The memorial had been in the restaurant (unrecognizable now from the old days-everything but the name had gone), and there were beautiful food and good champagne, good speeches. Wendy spoke brilliantly, honestly, poetically. Gail lurched with a silent,

perspectives on the present and their shared past. The gaps between how a character sees themselves and how their friends see them are astutely drawn, both painfully comic and frequently heartbreaking. . . . Wood is to be praised for taking female friendship seriously and for being caustically honest there s not a sentimental line in this beautifully insightful book. The Observer (London)

Three seventy-something women spend Christmas together and find new tensions in their long friendship. With the lightest of touches, this big-hearted, insightful read tackles friendship, ambition, aging and death. Good Housekeeping
 
A darkly funny, truthful novel . . . There is endless pleasure to be found in the candor and compassion Wood brings to bear on femininity and female friendship. Metro (UK)

A lovely, lively, intelligent, funny book . . . So good on aging and on the fraught, warm friendships between women. Tessa Hadley, author of The Past

I found reading The Weekend both hypnotic and profoundly unsettling. The prose is sharply vivid and precise, the characters and location exceptionally real, and I challenge anyone to write a better description of an elderly dog and its owner. Masterful. Rosamund Lupton, author of Sister and Three Hours

The Weekend positively hums with life even as these three women are approaching the end of theirs. The book is exquisitely wrenching and poignant when dealing with female friendship and old age, yet it still manages to be funny and very real. Claire Fuller, author of Our Endless Numbered Days

Friendship, ambition, love, sexual politics, and death: it s all here in one sharp, funny, heartbreaking, and gorgeously written package. I loved it. Paula Hawkins, #1 The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train

An insightful, poignant, and fiercely honest novel about female friendship and female aging. Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award winning author of The Friend
 
The Weekend is more Big Chill. . . . with a dash of Big Little Lies . . . A novel about decluttering and real estate, about the geometry of friendship, about sexual politics, and about how we change. The Guardian (London)

The Weekend is an unflinchingly observed celebration of the profundity and mundanity of friendship, treated with elegance, wit, and tenderness. Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.   The Australian (Sydney)
 
Wood s technique in this novel is masterly. The Sydney Morning Herald
 
One of the best novels of the year. The Saturday Paper (Australia)