I grew up with a sense that there was another, fuller, darker narrative looming behind the various shorter stories my mother told so well and so funnily.

Family Romance is a beautifully written memoir in which John Lanchester pieces together his parents’ history, their extraordinary secrets and the shape of their shared life.

From his grandparents’ beginnings in rural Ireland and colonial Rhodesia, Lanchester navigates through his family’s lives: his father Bill’s devastating wartime separation from his parents; his mother Julia’s tragic first love, her decision to become a nun and her adoption of a new identity. Lanchester illuminates their characters and explores their motives with moving insight.

Family Romance is a book about reticence, and also about its costs. It is a story about love and Ireland, and fearing the strength of your own feelings; about family ties, and the flight from family, and the deep human need to keep secrets.