Parents Linda and Gerry have been happily married for more than 30 years, so the news of their separation comes as an enormous shock to their daughter Nicole and son Jamie. The kind of rare story you want to nosedive into on a hot hungover weekend and slurp down like iced coffee - cold, sweet and quenching . Set in 2018, Claire Powell’s beautifully observed debut novel follows each member of the Maguire family over a tumultuous year of lunches, dinners and drinks, as old conflicts arise and relationships are re-evaluated. Its themes are unremarkable - love, self-knowledge, the feeling everyone else is living while you are standing still . Like her father, she can hear the thoughts of the recently deceased and give voice to their final wishes and desires.

Her short fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and in 2017 she won the Harper's Bazaar short story contest.Potem odcina od siebie matkę, którą uważa za winną rozstania, choć… wcale nikt z rodziny nie dał jej tego do zrozumienia. She is a graduate of the UEA Creative Writing MA, where she was awarded the Malcolm Bradbury Bursary and the Malcolm Bradbury Continuation Prize.

Nothing cataclysmic, this is a story of the every day, of the subtleties of familial communication (or often lack of it) of the things that we assume, the things that we hold close. The events felt, on occasion, as if they were washing over me but I found myself touched by the attempts of the author to show the characters shifting and developing. The way that Powell navigates heartache, depression, anxiety, and just not really knowing what your next step in life is, is truly exceptional.And although there are funny sections in the book, the emotional grounding far surpasses what I expected. This book seemed to be everywhere in 2022 and was recommended in many of the lists produced at the end of the year. Filled with razor-sharp dialogue and psychological acuity, At the Table is an astute debut novel about dysfunctional family life. When Linda and Gerry Maguire announce their separation after decades of marriage, their thirtysomething children find the news difficult to digest. Though major life events take place, this novel focuses primarily on the little moments that make up the mosaic of our lives.