A Real Piece of Work

THE NERO BOOK AWARD SHORTLISTED AUTHOR

What does it mean for a stranger to think you’re brave? Readers called me ‘raw’ because I wrote about crying into takeaway containers and drunk texting my dead sister’s number. People wanted to believe it was fearless of me to broadcast my breakdown, but the truth was that I’d curated that messiness until it was just the right kind of chaos.

Nola McConkey has made it. Animal Oracle, the memoir she has written about her beloved late sister Darina, has become a hit. People read it, critics loved it, producers now want to make it into a movie. The dream of quitting her job and becoming a full-time writer in London doesn’t seem so far away. There’s only one problem: everyone in her family has an opinion about the book – and none of them are good. Though Nola can’t let it affect her. It’s the price she must pay for the life she wants.

But now, someone has made an anonymous complaint to her publisher about Animal Oracle. Suddenly, her hard-won reputation as a literary darling is at stake. Nola is sure that only someone in her secretive, chaotic family could be to blame. As her parents and three remaining siblings prepare to spend the fifth anniversary of Darina’s death together on the isolated island of Lundy, Nola knows this is the perfect opportunity to convince her accuser to pull the complaint before it causes irreparable damage – but first, she must discover who made it.

A Real Piece of Work is a sparkling and spiky story of complicated families and even more complicated sisters, exploring who owns grief and who gets to tell the story of those who are gone and those left behind with tenderness, nuance and wit.

'Sharp, tender, and bracingly honest about who owns a narrative, and what it costs to claim it' OISÍN MCKENNA

'Has all the hallmarks of my favourite kind of novel: introspective, funny, philosophical, and bringing the outside world in' EMMA GANNON

'A tender and intricate novel . . . It’s like looking at a family portrait through the shards of a broken frame' WILLIAM RAYFET HUNTER

'This is such a timely novel about the versions of history we tell inside and outside of a family, who gets to write that down and how grief shapes us. Sharply observed, and deeply human.' JENNIE GODFREY

'A heartfelt, nuanced debut novel which balances the tension of opposites . . . a sparkling ode to sisterhood and finding the sublime in the everyday' SHARLENE TEO

© Freya Bromley 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026