A Complicated Matter: A historical novel of love, belonging and finding your place in the world by the Costa Book Award shortlisted author

Anne Youngson

maalis 2023 · Random House

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Set against the Blitz in London, a young woman's extraordinary journey of self-discovery and an intimate meditation on what it takes to find our place in the world.

A March Best Book in Red

'NOTE PERFECT' East Riding Magazine
'AN EXTRAORDINARY NEW WRITER' Nina Stibbe

I used to believe the world had been created for me; every stone and grain of sand. As I grew older, I began to think of myself as something tacked on to the edge.

1939, London: From McPhail's Passage to Kensington's Grand Palace Hotel, Rose Dunbar is evacuated from her humble home on the Rock of Gibraltar and dropped into a chaotic city of falling bombs, perplexing class rules and bad weather. Despite being 'flagrantly foreign' to the locals, she becomes an efficient go-between for the upper-class ladies helping out with the war effort and her own tribe of noisy displaced families.

It is only when she is shifted to the countryside to become secretary to the plain-speaking and sightless Major Inchbold that Rose's dizzying journey to womanhood will become more surreal than ever, as she drinks tea at the vicarage and stands up for the lower orders. But Rose's greatest dilemma is yet to come, as she must decide where her home - and her heart - really lies.

In Anne Youngson's wry and sublimely understated prose, this unique and beautiful story of love, class and belonging is also a profound and intimate meditation on what it takes to find our place in the world.

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Praise for ANNE YOUNGSON:

'Tender, wise and moving, Meet Me at the Museum is a novel to cherish.' JOHN BOYNE
'Insightful, emotionally acute and absorbing' DAILY EXPRESS
'Beautiful and affecting' NINA STIBBE

Readers love Anne Youngson's novels:
'I was utterly gripped and felt bereft when I'd finished it' *****
'I could not put this book down. An inspired approach to writing about life and love' *****
'One of my top ten best reads of the year'*****

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ANNE YOUNGSON is the author of the Costa First Book Award-shortlisted Meet Me at the Museum; BBC Radio Book Club pick, Three Women and a Boat and the story collection, The Six Who Came to Dinner. Anne Youngson's shrewd, warm-hearted and observational prose has been widely praised. Her new novel, A Complicated Matter explores the human heart through the coming-of-age of a young English refugee during the blitz. Anne's work is published around the world. She lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and has three grandchildren.