Margaret, Are You Leaving?
‘An insightful, emotionally intelligent writer’ The Times
Sydney, 2001. Now in her forties, Maggie Reid has built a good life for herself, surrounded by good people. She has an adorable but needy dog and a new relationship. She has tried hard to leave her painful past behind her, but when her beloved brother Lucas calls with news of their adopted mother’s death, he also delivers a bombshell about Maggie’s birth mother.
So begins an uncertain, bumpy journey to trace her mother’s identity, a quest that brings fresh heartbreak but also unexpected joy. Maggie’s spent her whole life leaving, but now, for the first time, will she find a reason to stay?
Deeply empathetic, uncommonly witty and wise, Margaret, Are You Leaving? celebrates the messiness of family and the beauty of life in all its heartache and wonder.
Sydney, 2001. Now in her forties, Maggie Reid has built a good life for herself, surrounded by good people. She has an adorable but needy dog and a new relationship. She has tried hard to leave her painful past behind her, but when her beloved brother Lucas calls with news of their adopted mother’s death, he also delivers a bombshell about Maggie’s birth mother.
So begins an uncertain, bumpy journey to trace her mother’s identity, a quest that brings fresh heartbreak but also unexpected joy. Maggie’s spent her whole life leaving, but now, for the first time, will she find a reason to stay?
Deeply empathetic, uncommonly witty and wise, Margaret, Are You Leaving? celebrates the messiness of family and the beauty of life in all its heartache and wonder.
Reviews
Such a warm, generous, uplifting book. Full of heart and wisdom, emotionally sharp and funny in a very human way
An extraordinary story of mothers and daughters . . . Reveals the human condition in all its flawed glory
An irresistible story of family, friendship and community, of mothers and daughters and bonds that time and tragedy cannot erase. Beautiful and heart-rending, it asks that most profound of questions: was I loved?
A tender and true story about friendship and families lost and found
What a gift Dianne Yarwood is to Australian literature. Margaret, Are You Leaving? is powerful and poignant . . . Devastating and tender
Thoughtful and quietly affecting, Margaret, Are You Leaving? is an earnest tribute to relationships of all kinds - mothers, friends, lovers, pets - and will resonate with readers of Charlotte Wood's The Weekend
Charming . . . A novel of losing and finding family, invested with the warmth and wit it needs to uplift and to complicate its melancholy
Complicated relationships are a specialty of Yarwood's, who handles them in this book with such a convincing depth
Moving . . . A gentle tale of the relationships in a person's life and how they shape who we become