Roar
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3.8 • 23 Ratings
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
‘Cecelia Ahern at her quirky, magical best’ Daily Mail
Now an Apple Original series from Apple TV+
A story for every woman.
A story for every moment.
Whether you want to laugh
To be moved
To love
To feel less guilt
To cry
To be comforted
To ROAR
There is a story for you.
From Sunday Times bestselling author Cecelia Ahern comes a collection of witty, original and moving stories for women everywhere.
‘Funny, wise and weighty, in a very good way…read one or two of Ahern’s fables at a time [to] truly appreciate their wit, pathos and imagination.’ Independent
‘Witty, playful, entertaining but also thought-provoking, salutary and empowering’ Daily Mail
A Radio 2 Bookclub Choice.
Reviews
‘A wonderful, inspiring collection…the kind of book everyone should have on their shelf’ Libby Page, bestselling author of The Lido
‘These provocative and witty stories prove it’s time to recognise Cecelia Ahern as one of our finest writers’ John Boyne, bestselling author of The Heart’s Invisible Furies
‘These stories sing from the page … sharp, clever, witty: a joy to read’ Donal Ryan, bestselling author of The Spinning Heart
‘Witty, playful, entertaining but also thought-provoking, salutary and empowering’ Daily Mail
‘An impressive, timely and entertaining collection’ Observer
‘Confidential, sympathetic and witty’ The Times
‘Funny, magical, her most powerful, most feminist work yet’ Irish Sunday Independent
‘Intriguing, substantial and impactful…The quiet call to arms that women never knew they needed’ Irish Independent
‘Smart and provocative…told with wit and verve.’ Mirror
‘Witty, smart, perpetually readable, this is the perfect collection’ Heat
‘Inventive and ingenious, with a doffing of the cap to Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood’ Stylist
‘Witty and relatable’ Woman and Home
‘Stories worth waiting for’ Image
‘Rich, challenging and comic’ Daily Express
‘Thought-provoking, clever and humorous… startlingly original and very enjoyable’ Women’s Weekly
About the author
Cecelia Ahern is one of the biggest selling authors to emerge in the past fifteen years. Her novels have been translated into thirty-five languages and have sold more than twenty-five million copies in over fifty countries. Two of her books have been adapted as films and she has created several TV series.
She and her books have won numerous awards, including the Irish Book Award for Popular Fiction for The Year I Met You in 2014. PS I Love You was awarded two Platinum Awards at the 2018 Specsavers Bestsellers Awards, for UK and Ireland.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Cecelia Ahern’s Inside Story: “These stories took about five years to complete—and I loved it. The first idea was sparked by a meeting I had in Los Angeles with a casting agent. We were discussing one of my projects. She was a very nice person and not trying to upset me in any way, but explained some ‘home truths’ about demographics. That some of my stories were attractive because of the age of the characters were appealing to advertisers. Women over 55, she said, simply had no appeal for advertisers at all. I left feeling quite dirty and thinking about how women feel like they’re literally becoming invisible as they get older.
“They are suddenly not the story, they’re not depicted—they’re simply not seen prominently on television. I sat there listening to this woman thinking that I wanted to write the absolute opposite to what she was saying. The first thing I did was write a screenplay called Old about a character in her 70s. The second thing I did was write the story called The Woman Who Slowly Disappears, about a woman who starts to disappear from society as she ages. That became the first story in the collection.
“As soon as I wrote that, it was quickly followed by something with a story to a theme that also bothered me. So it became this collection of quirky, unusual, whimsical, surreal stories—but all grounded in reality. They were so much fun and really rewarding to write, because they were short stories of varying lengths and some I wrote in half an hour propelled by some kind of adrenaline rush. I would feel so hyped up afterwards, like I’d really gotten something off my chest.
“I was writing these stories that I knew didn’t really fit into my public publishing career and I didn’t want to change them either. I didn’t want to have to compromise and change any of the weird things I was doing in the story. I was doing a lot of TV work at the time so spent five years trying to push them on TV networks, but that went very poorly. People were just asking me to write something more like PS, I Love You, or like Gone Girl because that was big at that moment. Then two years ago when Trump was being inaugurated they came up again. They found their own way out there. Timing decided it.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ahern's fantastic collection features stories of unnamed women facing modern life and its attendant difficulties, each told with fablesque twists. In "The Woman Who Returned and Exchanged Her Husband," men are literally on the market, able to be bought, returned, and exchanged. In "The Woman Who Was Kept on the Shelf," a woman spends half her life sitting on a shelf her beloved husband builds for her next to his other trophies. And in "The Woman Who Was Swallowed Up by the Floor and Who Met Lots of Other Women Down There Too," a woman mortified while giving a presentation is literally swallowed up by the floor, falling into a black hole where other embarrassed women are working up the courage to climb back. Ahern's women are by turns insecure and ambitious, quiet and challenging, as they struggle with careers, marriages, parenting, and social structures beyond their control. Ahern (P.S., I Love You) blends magical realism with keen observations about contemporary gender dynamics, offering readers a sharp selection of nuanced parables encouraging bravery, compassion, and self-reliance.
