The Awkward Age

Francesa Segal is precise and funny, and The Awkward Age is brimming with keen observations of the highest order--the clever, the sore, and the sublime.

Emma Straub

Francesca Segal gets the tricky mother/teenage daughter relationship just right in her sharply observant The Awkward Age.

Alice O'Keeffe, The Bookseller

Segal’s writing is a joy – funny, wise, and sharply observant... Terrific

The Bookseller

By turns tender, brutal, mordantly funny, and heartbreaking, The Awkward Age is preternaturally knowing about fractured families, and young, middle-aged, and elder love. Every sentence is gorgeously, masterfully written. I loved it as I’ve loved no other recent novel. Francesca Segal is a major novelist

Peter Nichols, author of The Rocks

A beguiling story about the oceans between family members, generations, and continents and the journeys we make to reach each other on the other side

Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty and No One is Here Except All of Us

Movingly insightful about love, grief, birth and parenting, funny about teenagers and compassionate about ageing, The Awkward Age is a witty, compelling delight.

AD Miller, author of Snowdrops & The Faithful Couple

There are moments in Francesca Segal’s novel when you are so caught up in the characters that you want to shout at them as though they are your own friends… Think rows, sulks, unexpected relationships and sweet romance all dissected with an elegantly forensic precision

Psychologies

Terrific, sharply observed… Segal gets the precarious mother-teenage daughter relationship spot on

Sue Price, Saga

Segal’s is a clever, cruel, redemptive, psychologically acute novel that made this reader glad to have been at school just too early for Facebook, selfies and an "online community" baying for news of your latest boyfriend

Laura Freeman, Standpoint

humorous, wise, well-observed

Sebastian Shakespeare, Tatler

A story that is equal parts hilarious and devastating

Vogue

Segal… is a sharp observer of the tribulations of teenage love and modern relationships. Particularly strong on how blind parents are towards their ghastly offspring’s flaws, this book is a lively, quick-witted performance

The Sunday Times

Elegant… an entertaining look at the messy business of trying to be in a family in emotionally trying circumstances… Irresistible

Eithne Farry, Mail on Sunday

In Francesca Segal’s magnificent new novel The Awkward Age, romantic and parental love go head to head, stress-testing loyalties and bonds with heartbreaking consequences… Genius… An impressively nuanced and convincing portrait of maternal love… a painful delight to read, invoking a perfectly balanced oscillation between compassion and frustration

Lucy Scholes, Independent

Themes of non-nuclear family life, the everyday fractures and renovations inherent to relationships of any kind, amid moments of pitch-perfect comic tension… Segal navigates these re-drawn battle lines with skill and sensitivity… There is no precise time, we are reminded, at which life becomes less tangled, at which personalities are formed as in aspic: we can see that all ages are awkward, but some are more awkward than others

Zoë Apostolides, Financial Times

Thoughtful and beautifully observed

Fanny Blake, Woman & Home

A gripping foray into second families

Nina Pottell, Prima

Francesca Segal’s sharply observed second novel asks what parents owe to their children, and vice versa… A great premise for a novel, and Segal handles it expertly… Everyday family interactions – the deep, primal resentments played out over a bowl of porridge, or a shopping list – are observed warmly and yet with hawk-like precision… skilfully crafted morality tale for our times

Ada Coghen, Literary Review

Thanks to its occasional moments of emotional veracity, The Awkward Age will be praised as a worthy successor to Segal’s debut

Ada Coghen, Literary Review

Segal’s wit and intelligence are entirely her own and the moral dilemmas of her characters could not be more modern… Segal has a superb eye for the lies that the middle-aged lovers tell themselves, and they are jolted back to reality when it all goes spectacularly wrong. It is nearly a tragedy, but not quite; she’s just too funny

Kate Saunders, The Times

Segal excels at character minutiae, switching protagonists from page to page but still doing each one justice… By the end of the book, I felt I would recognise these people waking down Haverstock Hill, albeit that I might not want to stop for a chat… As a comedy of manners though, The Awkward Age is entertaining and intelligently written

Jennifer Lipman, Jewish Chronicle

She takes six characters… and plonks them in sturdy houses in Hampstead, sets the clock, and lets the story play out… Like a good piece of Bach, what unfolds has an inevitability to it but manages also to be surprising at every moment. Segal has an uncanny ability to climb into the mind of each character and show us convincingly exactly what he or she would think, say and do

Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Spectator

Francesca Segal is an accomplished writer. She neatly describes the clash of cultures between the academically rigorous education enjoyed by Nathan and Gwen’s freer, no-holds-barred comprehensive school. There is an engaging and colourful cast of characters… Segal vividly conveys the difficulties faced by imperfectly blended families

Vanessa Berridge, Daily Express

This is a warm, funny book dealing with a most modern matter

Running In Heels

An adept, comic study of shifting priorities and the continual flux of child-parent relationships

Financial Times, Summer Books 2017

A very smart, soulful, compelling, elegantly written domestic novel

Nick Hornby, Observer

It’s beautifully written

Victoria Hislop, Good Housekeeping

A brilliant, thoroughly modern family drama from the author of The Innocents

Hayley Maitland, Vogue

Punchy… Segal tackles her subject with humour and intelligence and a wealth of memorable characters

Giulia Miller, Jewish Quarterly

Exuberant and entertaining… The rest of the narrative then considers how the competing needs and duties of its four main characters can be met, handled and resolved. It does so with brio, insight and empathy, and with carefully modulated comic energy

Matthew Adams, Prospect

A compelling story on the complexities that come with a very modern family that we just couldn’t put down

Topshop

Francesca Segal is incisive on modern lives, penetrating and thoughtful - and yet always joyfully entertaining and stylishly readable.

Naomi Alderman

Love, loss, new beginnings and saying goodbye, it's all in here. A moving read

Frankie Graddon, Pool

A terrific novel.

John Boyne, Irish Independent

[Segal's] descriptions are spare and unerring; everyday family interactions are observed warmly and yet with precision

Alice O’Keeffe, Guardian