'Leslie Bird loves being a wife and mother but loathes her husband and children. The only person she ever loved was born dead.
'Meet Leslie Bird, the irascible matriarch of a big bonkers family, coming of age and to the boil, as the secrets and slights that have shaped her and her hapless husband's lives impact their children in the most profound and complex ways. In other words, everyone's story. Sort of. Because this is a story, and family, like none you've ever read before.
'Things She Would Have Said Herself is a darkly funny, deeply moving novel about the lengths and breadths one woman will go to ignore her own and others' pain and what happens when she's confronted by it one sweltering Christmas day.
'A story of motherhood, marriage, madness, unspeakable loss and the heartbreaking messy love that holds a family together. Honest, revealing, resonant and startlingly original, if you loved Olive Kitteridge and Boy Swallows Universe, you will love this book!' (Publication summary)
'Leslie Bird disapproves of the world. Specifically, she disapproves of gay people, trans people, Muslims, curly hair, exposed décolletages and basically everything that her husband, Wallace, and their children do. Sometimes she keeps her disapproval and bigotry to herself, but mostly she doesn’t.'(Introduction)
'Leslie Bird disapproves of the world. Specifically, she disapproves of gay people, trans people, Muslims, curly hair, exposed décolletages and basically everything that her husband, Wallace, and their children do. Sometimes she keeps her disapproval and bigotry to herself, but mostly she doesn’t.'(Introduction)
