Getting Colder

They were colour-supplement darlings of the 1980s: Patrick, the sexy, ferocious young playwright, scourge of an enthralled establishment, and Sara, who abandoned her two children to fulfil her destiny as Patrick's beautiful, devoted wife and muse.

Thirty-five years later, Sara's death leaves Patrick alone in their crumbling house in Cornwall, with his whisky, his writer's block and his undimmed rage against the world. But bereavement is no respecter of life's estrangements, and Sara's children, Louise and Nigel, are now adults, with memories, questions and agendas of their own. What was their mother really like? Why did she leave them? What has she left them? And how can Patrick carry on without the love of his life?

GETTING COLDER is a painfully funny and perceptive novel about family, love, and how sometimes the harder you look, the less you find.

Short-listed for Encore Award 2015 (UK)

“The brilliant What They Do in the Dark was always going to be a hard act to follow, but Getting Colder has once again proved that Coe's a fearless writer, not afraid to linger in the murky, messy corners of her characters' lives”

Independent
Ferociously funny . . . rings all too painfully true Daily Mail
An acutely observed family drama . . . darkly humorous Sunday Mirror
An uncomfortable but brilliantly acute reading of grief, self-interest and the persistence of old wounds Financial Times
A savage family saga with lots to say about England today Metro
Blackly comic . . . crisply plotted and filled with pleasurably sharp observations Guardian
Dysfunctional family drama at its most satisfying: think Death at a Funeral meets Anne Enright's The Green Road with a dash of David Nicholls' dry wit Bustle
Brims over with trenchant observation, emotional truth and bitter wit Mail on Sunday

Amanda Coe is the acclaimed screenwriter and author who in 2013 won a BAFTA for the BBC Four adaptation of John Braine's Room at the Top, starring Maxine Peake. Her other credits include Life in Squares, Margot, As If and the recent BBC One adaptation of Apple Tree Yard. Her novels What They Do in the Dark and Getting Colder are published by Virago.

'Blackly comic . . . crisply plotted and filled with pleasurably sharp observations' Guardian They were colour-supplement darlings of the 1980s: Patrick, the sexy, ferocious young playwright, scourge of an enthralled establishment; and Sara, who abandoned her two children to fulfil her destiny as Patrick's beautiful, devoted wife and muse. Thirty-five years later, Sara's death leaves Patrick alone in their crumbling house in Cornwall, with his whisky, his writer's block and his undimmed rage against the world. But bereavement is no respecter of life's estrangements, and Sara's children, Louise and Nigel, are now adults with memories, questions and agendas of their own. What was their mother really like? Why did she leave them? What has she left them? And how can Patrick carry on without the love of his life? 'An uncomfortable but brilliantly acute reading of grief, self-interest and the persistence of old wounds' Financial Times 'Coe's a fearless writer, not afraid to linger in the murky, messy corners of her characters' lives' Independent

They were colour-supplement darlings of the 1980s: Patrick, the sexy, ferocious young playwright, scourge of an enthralled establishment, and Sara, who abandoned her two children to fulfil her destiny as Patrick's beautiful, devoted wife and muse.Thirty-five years later, Sara's death leaves Patrick alone in their crumbling house in Cornwall, with his whisky, his writer's block and his undimmed rage against the world. But bereavement is no respecter of life's estrangements, and Sara's children, Louise and Nigel, are now adults, with memories, questions and agendas of their own. What was their mother really like? Why did she leave them? What has she left them? And how can Patrick carry on without the love of his life? GETTING COLDER is a painfully funny and perceptive novel about family, love, and how sometimes the harder you look, the less you find.

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