Publishers Weekly
04/10/2023
Littlewood debuts with an uneven perimenopause drama centered on the tempestuous relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter. Grace is 45 and recently separated from her husband, Ben. Once a gifted translator whose skills made her famous on television (the press called her a “ravishing redhead” and a “cunning linguist”), Grace feels adrift in her life, with diminishing professional prospects and a body that feels like it’s “drying up from the inside out.” She can’t believe her daughter, 15-year-old Lotte, has grown from being the baby on her hip to a distant teenager and something of a TikTok sensation. When Grace finds a sexually suggestive note in the pocket of Lotte’s blazer, her anxiety skyrockets. Then Grace learns her daughter has been skipping school. As Lotte pulls further away, Grace goes increasingly off-kilter, embarking on a frenzied, disastrous quest to bring Lotte a birthday cake. The novel employs a nonlinear timeline, with some chapters taking place in the early aughts, when Grace and Ben first met at a polyglot competition. Though the plot can feel undercooked, Littlewood easily captures the grief Grace feels at nearing the end of her reproductive years, and the mother-daughter relationship is similarly well drawn. It’s a mixed bag, but Littlewood, like her protagonist, consistently finds the right words. (Sep.)
From the Publisher
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
A Today Read with Jenna Book Club Pick
An Indie Next Pick for September 2023
Named one of the Washington Post’s “The 10 Best Feel Good Books of 2023”
“The most hilarious, feel-good book of the year. . . . You will laugh on the first page and you will keep laughing until you're crying on the last page.”
—Jenna Bush Hager, Today
“Grace Adams is . . . the latest in a series of brilliant, beautiful and privileged protagonists (Amy Dunne, Bernadette Fox, Barbie) undone by the challenges of modern womanhood.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“With this hilarious debut novel, Fran Littlewood delivers a fantastic ode to female rage and how it (wildly!) plays out over the course of a single day.”
—Real Simple
“A gripping story of joy, grief, stress, worry, love at first sight, parenting...frank, nuanced, and evocative.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Hugely enjoyable. Compelling, funny and poignant. I devoured it.”
—Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl On The Train
“I just adored this beautiful debut novel! Funny, moving and at times absolutely heartbreaking, it had me captivated until the very last page. An unforgettable read.”
—Liane Moriarty, New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies
“From the first hot minute when Grace Adams, stalled in traffic, stuck in her car, simply opens the door and walks away from it all—into her day, the single day that gathers all her days up to this tipping point at the middle, she had me. How life in the middle of our lives breaks us open—and apart—and then open again. I finished her story on a plane above the country, so full, and in tears. ‘Ma’am?’ my seat-mate asked, ‘are you ok?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I answered. And gave him this book.”
—Sarah Blake, New York Times bestselling author of The Postmistress and The Guest Book
"Amazing Grace Adams is an exacting and brilliantly structured novel about love, grief, hope lost and then found again. I rooted for Grace from the first sentence."
—Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes
"Fran Littlewood has written a magnificent novel. Grace Adams is everywoman – filled with promise, trepidatious in love and eventually, a besotted mother. Amazing Grace Adams is a fully realized story of catastrophe and joy, grief and love, and the hidden chambers of the human heart that carry the best and worst of our experience. A stunning debut."
–Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone
“I can’t remember the last time I read a novel with such unbridled enthusiasm. Amazing Grace Adams is a raw, uproariously hilarious portrait of parenthood, love, and family; it’s also a profound examination of the way language can both save us and fail us when we need it the most. I’d walk across London on the hottest day of the year with Fran Littlewood—hell, I’d walk anywhere with her. I’m begging you: read this book.”
—Grant Ginder, author of Let's Not Do That Again and The People We Hate at the Wedding
“I devoured it. Vivid, visceral, and incredibly emotional. I laughed and sobbed.”
—Tim Minchin, Tony Award nominee, Matilda the Musical and Groundhog Day the Musical
Library Journal
09/01/2023
DEBUT Tales of extraordinary women abound, but the title character of Littlewood's first novel is a seemingly relatable everywoman. The timeline bounces around between Grace's 20s, 30s, and 40s, and the story begins as she spends the day trying to deliver a birthday cake to Lotte, her estranged 16-year-old daughter. She abandons her car in gridlock and starts hoofing it, setting off on a deeply personal pilgrimage. Her journey takes her from the bakery where she ordered the overpriced cake to an incident with the police and other assorted encounters. Grace is obviously troubled, and her journey to her daughter is also one of insight into her own life. Perimenopause rears its head, divorce seems imminent, and unemployment contributes to what appears to be Grace's break with reality, but it is all underscored by the worst tragedy a parent can face. Although the story seems inconsistent at times, it only enhances the surreality that is Grace's life. Despite this, readers will root for her. VERDICT An utterly charming debut, sure to appeal to those who loved Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine or Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple.—Stacy Alesi
NOVEMBER 2023 - AudioFile
Claire Skinner convinces listeners from the onset that she is the one and only amazing Grace Adams. With humor and sarcasm, Skinner portrays the formidable linguist, who has never wanted children. Instead she lands a dream job on a London TV show. But new motherhood role eventually costs Grace her job. Then she discovers unexpected love. Skinner reveals the joy and anguish Grace experiences amid life's rocky twists. She maneuvers Grace's chaotic inner life seamlessly. Well written and expertly narrated, this audiobook is a must-listen. B.J.P. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-06-08
A woman walks across London to deliver a birthday cake for her 16-year-old daughter, reliving the joys and tragedies of the previous decades.
Grace Adams is in her mid-40s, late 20s, and mid-30s in this layered novel exploring her past and present relationships with her husband, Ben, and daughter, Lotte. In the present, Grace is trekking across London on a scorching hot day, having abandoned her car to gridlock, refusing to give up on a plan to see a daughter who doesn’t want to see her. Simultaneously, we see the Grace of four months ago, a harried, perimenopausal woman convinced she has ruined everything, and the Grace of the earlier 2000s, an award-winning linguist who’s landed a lucrative TV gig and has no intention of having children but who becomes a stay-at-home mother in crisis. Ben is a man who has filed for divorce, a harried husband grappling with being a dad to an 8-year-old daughter whose mother has disappeared, and a young Ph.D. student desperate to spend more time with an amazing woman he has just met. Lotte is a 15-turning-16-year-old child-woman doing poorly in school, finding social media fame, and challenging the establishment; a young child who adores her mother; and a growing, not-yet-born baby. The relationships between each pair and among all of them together are complex and layered, and Littlewood confronts the effects that aging and trauma, stress, poor decisions, and memories of overheard and unspoken conversations can have on a person’s sense of self and their relationships. The result is simultaneously frank, nuanced, and evocative.
A gripping story of joy, grief, stress, worry, love at first sight, parenting, and trauma.
