Happy Accidents Tiffany Murray 9780007183678

Coming of age in rural England in the eighties is far from straightforward for Kate Happy, in a hilarious, highly-praised debut novel of family, secrets and dead ancestors in the attic.

Gran has been homesick for Coney Island for thirty-eight years, hating her husband but determinedly donning her best pink Chanel suit and high heels to step out into the muck-splattered farmyard. Grandpa is bonkers, an ex-naval Captain who wanders round the house shouting sea-faring commands. Mum's gone AWOL since she ran over Kate's dad in her soft-top Triumph Spitfire. And are those really Dad's ashes in a Hellmann's mayonnaise jar in the attic?

Crackling with the darkest of dark humour, brimming with crazy ancestors and closely guarded secrets, HAPPY ACCIDENTS is a wonderful first novel that confirms Tiffany Murray as a rising star of British fiction.

A graduate of UEA's MA fiction program, Tiffany Murray has had short fiction appear in Pretext and Mslexia, as well as a series of first-person articles published in The Independent on Sunday. She has lived in New York, where she taught Caribbean literature at NYU; she was an actress for a second; and she is now completing her PhD. at UEA, where she teaches creative writing with Paul Magrs, Michele Roberts and Patricia Duncker. Tiffany is co-editing Pretext 8 with Helon Habila.

'Witty, romantic and irreverent... Inventive, funny and affecting, this is a story that is powerful without being mawkish.' Daily Mail

'Along with her whip-cracking dialogue, it is quirky images that are Murray's forte ... throwing the freewheeeling antics of the Happys into hilarious relief.' The Observer

'Murray manages to counterpoint beautifully the loveless, the perverse and even the wicked with all that is tender and true in human relationships.' Zoe Strimpel, Time Out

'Woody Allen visits Cold Comfort Farm.' Boyd Tonkin, Independent