Not Speaking

Families are places of love, care, and fun; also of anger, anxiety, and quarrels. Not Speaking tells the story of a Greek matriarch, Rena, and her English children in post-war London and the present.

It begins with Rena's move out of a flat in St John's Wood owned by her son Nicky Clarke, and the family disagreement that erupted. Moving through the London slums of Blackfriars, Greece under Nazi occupation, the Old Kent Road, Elephant and Castle, and the world of Mayfair hairdressing, this is a tale of enrichment and fame, infidelity and its consequences.

And in the end, it has a message: every family is unique and all families are the same.

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'Wonderfully evocative – funny, illuminating and moving.'

Jenny Uglow