> Skip to content
  • Published: 26 June 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784162283
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $24.99

Raking The Ashes




A coruscating comedy about the ties that bind more savagely than any other - those of families.

Lovers, colleagues, family - Tilly has always been brilliant at pushing people in and out of her life exactly as it suits her. Then along comes Geoffrey, gentle, compassionate, generous to a fault, with his miserable little children and his manipulative ex-wife.

Tilly's own expertise in the arts of deception and avoidance should be enough to make sure she's always one step ahead of Geoffrey's disastrous, crumbling family. But time and again she finds herself staying, brought down by their cowardly backsliding and their barefaced lies.

How has she managed to stay so long in a relationship she knows perfectly well has to be doomed? More importantly, how can Tilly plan her permanent escape?

  • Published: 26 June 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784162283
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

Anne Fine

Anne Fine is one of our most distinguished writers for children. She has written over fifty highly acclaimed books and has won numerous awards, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and both the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year and the Carnegie Medal twice over. Anne was appointed the Children’s Laureate from 2001-3, and her work has been translated into over forty languages. In 2003 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded an OBE. Anne lives in County Durham.

Anne Fine was born and educated in the Midlands, and now lives in County Durham. She has written numerous highly acclaimed and prize-winning books for children and adults.
Her novel The Tulip Touch won the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year Award; Goggle-Eyes won the Guardian Children's Fiction Award and the Carnegie Medal, and was adapted for television by the BBC; Flour Babies won the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year Award; Bill's New Frock won a Smarties Prize, and Madame Doubtfire has become a major feature film starring Robin Williams. Anne was the Children's Laureate 2001 - 2003 and won an OBE in 2003.

Also by Anne Fine

See all

Praise for Raking The Ashes

'A fearless novelist . . . also a constantly amusing writer. The result is an unsettling, sometimes angry but always engrossing story'

Independent

'[A] remarkable novel...there is something terrifyingly recognisable in each of the characters that will have readers looking deep inside their souls'

The Observer

'Written with humour and barbed wit'

Good Housekeeping

'Admirably acute observations of the trivialities of domestic life'

The Mail on Sunday

'Displays her familiar cool, unfussy style'

Guardian

'Searing black comedy...a clear-eyed and fearless look at the role of honesty within relationships'

Irish Examiner

'A scandalously good read'

The Scotsman

'So savage and sharp in its insights that it cuts, this is a brilliantly compulsive, forensic dissection of a relationship built on ironies and evasions'

The Times

'Deftly plotted'

Daily Mail

'A very admirable and compelling novel'

Daily Mirror

'Family relationships are rarely analysed with the depth of black humour that Anne Fine can bring to bear'

Yorkshire Evening Post

Brilliant

Closer

An enjoyably black and bracingly unsentimental novel

The Times

Brilliant black comedy

Woman&Home