Jack & Bet

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What to expect

'A tender, unsentimental exploration of the bittersweet joys of lifelong companionship' – Daily Mail

Even the longest marriages have their secrets . . .

Jack and Bet have been married for seventy years. Happily so, for the most part. Now, all they want is to enjoy the time they have left together in their small flat. But their son Tommy has other ideas: he thinks they should move out and opt for round-the-clock care in a very different kind of home.

When a young Romanian woman, Marinela, enters their lives, Bet thinks she might have found a solution to all of their problems; one that could change Marinela’s life for the better. But doing so would mean confronting a long-buried secret Bet has kept hidden from everyone, even Jack, for decades.

An irresistibly moving story about love and loss, Sarah Butler's Jack & Bet is at once a story of unlikely friendship and a tender look at a lifelong struggle to find a place to call home.

'Full of beauty, pain and joy, I loved Jack & Bet' – Laura Barnett, author of The Versions of Us

Critics Review

A tender, unsentimental exploration of the bittersweet joys of lifelong companionship, beautifully capturing the pangs of ageing and the treacheries of time
Daily Mail
Full of beauty, pain and joy, I loved Jack & Bet
Laura Barnett, author of The Versions of Us
A moving yet unsentimental story about family and love and the secrets we live with
Paul McVeigh, author of The Good Son
With mounting tension, it demonstrates why it’s never too late to have your world turned upside down
Oliver Harris, author of A Shadow of Intelligence
Seductive and assured, Jack & Bet is a warm, wise and wonderfully defiant exploration of a long marriage and a short-lived experiment in social housing
Emma Claire Sweeney, author of Owl Song at Dawn
I read Jack & Bet with enjoyment and heartbreak . . . wins its place in the burgeoning writing that shines a spotlight on the lives of over seventies in Britain
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, author of The First Woman
I loved Jack & Bet. Butler writes from Jack, Bet and Marinela's perspectives with such compassion and understanding
Susan Barker, author of The Incarnations
A fantastic novel - totally absorbing and full of heart
Helen Mort, author of No Map Could Show Them

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