Jack & Bet

'A tender, unsentimental exploration of the bittersweet joys of lifelong companionship' – Daily MailEven the longest marriages have their secrets . . .Jack and Bet have been married for seventy years. Happily so, for the most part. Now, all they want is to enjoy the time they have left together in their small flat. But their son Tommy has other ideas: he thinks they should move out and opt for round-the-clock care in a very different kind of home.When a young Romanian woman, Marinela, enters their lives, Bet thinks she might have found a solution to all of their problems; one that could change Marinela’s life for the better. But doing so would mean confronting a long-buried secret Bet has kept hidden from everyone, even Jack, for decades.An irresistibly moving story about love and loss, Sarah Butler's Jack & Bet is at once a story of unlikely friendship and a tender look at a lifelong struggle to find a place to call home.'Full of beauty, pain and joy, I loved Jack & Bet' – Laura Barnett, author of The Versions of Us

A tender, unsentimental exploration of the bittersweet joys of lifelong companionship, beautifully capturing the pangs of ageing and the treacheries of time , Full of beauty, pain and joy, I loved Jack & Bet, A moving yet unsentimental story about family and love and the secrets we live with, With mounting tension, it demonstrates why it’s never too late to have your world turned upside down, Seductive and assured, Jack & Bet is a warm, wise and wonderfully defiant exploration of a long marriage and a short-lived experiment in social housing

Sarah Butler is the acclaimed author of Ten Things I've Learnt About Love and Before the Fire. Her writing has been translated into fourteen languages. She is also the author of a novella, Not Home, written in conversation with people living in unsupported temporary accommodation. Sarah is a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and lives in Manchester with her family.