No Such Thing as Monday

From a Booker Prize-longlisted author, a novel in which a woman tries to overcome her abusive past and find her estranged sister in a deeply moving and darkly funny quest for redemption

Foul-mouthed, scrappy, and self-destructive, Steffie is her own worst enemy. Sustained by her sardonic sense of humor, she spends her days working at a dry cleaner’s and tending to her ailing, impoverished, abusive father. She was always his favorite, a fact that leaves her wracked with guilt; her sister Caroline, who bore the brunt of his rage, fled when they were both teenagers.

When her father dies, Steffie sets out to find Caroline, seeking love and forgiveness in a world which has too often denied her both. Along the way, she must confront her own memories, and the choices that have brought her to this point.

Written in the working-class British realist tradition of Douglas Stuart and Andrea Arnold, No Such Thing as Monday cements Hughes’ reputation as an exceptional and compassionate chronicler of precarious and chaotic lives.