This 2022 novel was the first of Wait’s that I have read. It is a family drama set in the present day in a modern, dysfunctional family. The central character is one of two adult twins, and the book explores the relationship with their brother, their parents, and their wider family and friends.

The book opens with the funeral of their mother’s sister. This brings the family together after they have quite dramatically fallen out, and the rest of the book explores what lay behind that falling out, and whether it can be healed.

This all sounds very dramatic, and perhaps it is, but what really stands out is the humour. Wait made me laugh out loud several times, not least because the characters and the absurd situations in which they find themselves are so relatable.

This was a book I thoroughly enjoyed.

Some quotations I noted down:

People, Celia has observed, are not very imaginative and will in almost every case say what is obvious, not what is interesting.

But one day during the summer term, Olivia comes to him with that intense look on her face that always makes Michael nervous. ‘There’s something you should know,’ she says, sitting down on his bed. ‘I’m pregnant.’

‘God!’ Michael says. ‘Oh my God. Wow. Wow.’ He can see he isn’t doing particularly well. ‘Whose is it?’

He knows immediately that this is the wrong thing to say, but it is too late to take it back.

Olivia glares at him. ‘Does it matter?’ There is a pause, then she says, ‘It’s yours, if you must know.’

Michael is shocked by this, especially since they’ve never had sex.

‘Not yours literally,’ Olivia says. ‘Yours emotionally. I’m closer to you than any man I’ve ever known. My body is infused with you, and this baby is yours. Its soul is part you and part me.’

I think we just forget when we’re older all the hard things about being a child. I remember feeling anxious a lot of the time. It’s not always true that children are happier than adults. Even if you had a nice childhood.

‘Do you think he didn’t love us at all?’ she says to Hanna.

‘I don’t know,’ Hanna says. She has been unusually quiet since they learned about the will. ‘I think he probably did. But it’s sort of irrelevant what you feel if you don’t act on it, isn’t it?’ She is frowning, looking away from Alice. ‘His kind of love wasn’t worth much in the end.’

Thanks to the London Library for lending me their copy of this book.