Meet the Piper family: forty-year-old Anna, pregnant after a fling with a twenty-year-old, but in love with another man. Her ex-husband Sam and his new girlfriend Isabel. Her brother, Neil, his husband Santiago, and their baby daughter Paloma. Her sister, Maeve, and her thirteen-year-old son Storm. Josh, her shy younger brother. Dinkie, her grandmother, who everyone in the family looks up to. Every few Sundays, the Piper family gathers together to have lunch along with friends, boyfriends and girlfriends. Each lunch is full of revelations and spilled secrets that bring the family members closer.
The story is character-driven and it’s full of both funny and moving moments. I liked all of the colourful cast and couldn’t stop reading about them. I found Ashton's writing captivating and her stories heart-warming and gripping. (NP)
Juliet Ashton's latest novel, The Sunday Lunch Club, is centred around a regular family gathering. The summary says: "The first rule of Sunday Lunch Club is ... don't make any afternoon plans.
Every few Sundays, Anna and her extended family and friends get together for lunch. They talk, they laugh, they bicker, they eat too much. Sometimes the important stuff is left unsaid, other times it's said in the wrong way.
Sitting between her ex-husband and her new lover, Anna is coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy at the age of forty. Also at the table are her ageing grandmother, her promiscuous sister, her flamboyantly gay brother and a memory too terrible to contemplate.
Until, that is, a letter arrives from the person Anna scarred all those years ago. Can Anna reconcile her painful past with her uncertain future?" The Sunday Lunch Club is out in April 2018.