'This Is Yesterday is a song for the outsiders, a hymn to the suburban misfits. Here the tensions and oddness of lower-middle class family life are explored in poetic detail . . . A voice of hope for those who boldly follow their own creative path from adolescence to middle age' Benjamin Myers, author of The OffingPeach is alone and adrift in London's sprawl, with a stalled art career and an unhappiness she knows won't be cured by a boyfriend or baby. Then she gets a shocking phone call that brings her face to face with her fractured family, and sends her spiralling into her past, to a scorched summer years ago in 90s suburbia . . .Back in 1994, Peach longs to flee the stifling nowhere that makes her a misfit. Hot listless days and sleepless drunken nights have awakened in her a latent, destructive curiosity; she haunts airless attics, unlocks sealed doors, pries into private affairs and finally unearths a secret that rips her family apart, disrupting everything and setting the course for the rest of her life.Now, facing this new crisis, Peach and her sister set out to confront a past they have avoided for two decades and meet a future they have no idea how to navigate. This is Yesterday is a book about beginnings and endings, about adolescence and ageing, failures, families, love and loneliness. It is the story of how the girls we once were shape the women we become.
'This Is Yesterday is a song for the outsiders, a hymn to the suburban misfits. Here the tensions and oddness of lower-middle class family life are explored in poetic detail . . . A voice of hope for those who boldly follow their own creative path from adolescence to middle age' Benjamin Myers, author of The Offing
Alone and adrift in London, Peach is heading into her mid-forties with nothing to show for her youthful promise but a stalled art career and the stopgap job in a Mayfair gallery that she's somehow been doing for a decade.
She is too smart and independent to believe her unhappiness will be cured by a relationship and a baby, too lonely to break her cycle of drunken hook ups and nervous breakdowns. She is too young to feel this tired, and far too old to feel this lost.
When Peach is woken one night with news that her father, who has Alzheimer's disease, is in intensive care, she can no longer outrun the summer of secrets and sexual awakenings that augured twenty-five years of estrangement from her family. Now, as they all gather in the hospital, past and present collide, forcing Peach to confront the consequences of her actions - and inactions - throughout the years.
This Is Yesterday is a story of a woman's relationship with her art, her body and desires, her memories, herself. It is a story of beginning, ending and becoming.
