> Skip to content
  • Published: 3 November 2017
  • ISBN: 9780241972304
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368
Categories:

Cousins




Love knows no boundaries...

Will Tye, a teenage boy from a middle-class, suburban family, develops his first intense crush on a girl. But this familiar love story has a dark twist - the girl is his own cousin Cecelia. News of the infatuation spreads through generations of the complex and eccentric Tye family, leaving ripples of resentment and disquiet. When Will experiences a life-changing accident, Cecelia is the most closely affected by his suffering - and her own life is forever changed by how she will respond to it.

Told through the eyes of three women close to Will, his sister, his grandmother and his aunt, Cousins takes us from the outbreak of the Second World War to the present day, exploring the recurrence of tragedy, the nature of transgression, and the limits of morality and love.

  • Published: 3 November 2017
  • ISBN: 9780241972304
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368
Categories:

Also by Salley Vickers

See all

Praise for Cousins

A wonderful book. Salley Vickers spins a spellbinding account of a family in distress

Elizabeth Strout

A magical and at times sinister story about love, loss, secrets and forgiveness

Scotland on Sunday on 'The Cleaner of Chartres'

A psychologically acute case study

Mail on Sunday

A story of a family rocked by tragedy

Daily Mail

A story of secrets, lies and history is elegantly handled... She lays bare the inner workings of one family, possibly every family, with an often disconcerting clarity

The Times

Absorbing, subtle and utterly joyous

Sunday Times on 'The Cleaner of Chartres'

Beautifully and brilliantly controlled. A triumph

John Julius Norwich on 'Miss Garnet's Angel'

Each distinct voice in this complex pattern of relationships is presented with deep empathy and clarity, so that you feel a real three-dimensional quality in the characters. The most painful ethical dilemmas are laid out with compassion and without manipulation. A serious, mature book that is also compellingly enjoyable

Rowan Williams

If you're a fan of Marilynne Robinson (the Pulitzer-prize winning author of Gilead), you'll love this...a dark and gritty read

Sunday Times

No one can dig down into the shrouded recesses of the human heart quite as forensically as Vickers

Sunday Times

One of our best women writers...Cousins is a towering tale of three generations of the Tye family, spanning 70 years

Reader's Digest

Salley Vickers sees with a clear eye and writes with a light hand. She's a presence worth cherishing

Philip Pullman on 'The Cleaner of Chartres'

This is a highly charged novel you'll find hard to put down...The novel raises important issues about motherhood and family connections, and examines the survivor's guilt felt by many of the characters that helps to drive the painful resolution

Sunday Express

Utterly compelling... Cousins is a remarkable book about the strange tact and terrors of family life and the histories that haunt it

Adam Phillips

Vickers has a formidable knack for laying open the human heart... a layered family drama

Sunday Times

Vickers ponders undercurrents that swirl down the ages...Vickers commitment to the realism required by fictional memoir...a fascinating exploration of the often equivocal and always cryptic nature of family love

Guardian