{"id":565,"date":"2019-03-04T15:39:46","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T15:39:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urbanwords.org.uk\/sarah\/?page_id=565"},"modified":"2022-03-02T12:29:14","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T12:29:14","slug":"jack-and-bet","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.urbanwords.org.uk\/sarah\/jack-and-bet\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack and Bet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Jack and Bet<\/em> was published by Picador on 5 March 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jack is a man of few words, married to a woman of many. He and Bet have\nbeen together for seventy years — almost a lifetime — and happily so, for the\nmost part. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All Jack and Bet want is to enjoy the\ntime they have left together, in the flat they have tried to make their home.\nTheir son Tommy has other ideas: he wants them to live somewhere with\nround-the-clock care, hot meals, activities. Bet thinks they can manage just\nfine.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When they strike up an unlikely friendship with Marinela, a young\nRomanian woman, Bet thinks she has found the perfect solution — one that could\nchange Marinela’s life as well as theirs. But this means revisiting an old love\naffair, and confronting a long-buried secret she has kept hidden from everyone,\neven Jack, for many years.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tender, moving, and beautifully told, Jack and Bet<\/em> is an\nunforgettable novel about love and loss, the joys and regrets of a long\nmarriage, and the struggle to find a place to call home.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You can get hold of a copy of Jack and Bet<\/em> from your local bookstore, library or online at bookshop.org<\/a> (if you buy through this link I get a few extra pennies!). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some nice things some nice people have said about Jack and Bet:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A tender, unsentimental exploration of the bittersweet joys of lifelong companionship, beautifully capturing the pangs of ageing and the treacheries of time<\/strong>” Daily Mail<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Full of beauty, pain and joy, I loved\u00a0Jack & Bet<\/em><\/strong>” Laura Barnett, author of\u00a0The Versions of Us<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A moving yet unsentimental story about family and love and the secrets we live with<\/strong>” Paul McVeigh, author of\u00a0The Good Son<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“With mounting tension, it demonstrates why it\u2019s never too late to have your world turned upside down<\/strong>” Oliver Harris, author of\u00a0A Shadow of Intelligence<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Seductive and assured,\u00a0Jack & Bet<\/em>\u00a0is a warm, wise and wonderfully defiant exploration of a long marriage and a short-lived experiment in social housing<\/strong>”\u00a0 Emma Claire Sweeney, author of\u00a0Owl Song at Dawn<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I read\u00a0Jack & Bet\u00a0<\/em>with enjoyment and heartbreak<\/strong>\u00a0. . . wins its place in the burgeoning writing that shines a spotlight on the lives of over seventies in Britain<\/strong>” Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, author of\u00a0The First Woman<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I loved\u00a0Jack & Bet<\/em>.<\/strong>\u00a0Butler writes from Jack, Bet and Marinela’s perspectives with such compassion and understanding”<\/strong> Susan Barker, author of\u00a0The Incarnations<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A fantastic novel – totally absorbing and full of heart<\/strong>” Helen Mort, author of\u00a0Black Car Burning <\/em>and No Map Could Show Them<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jack and Bet was published by Picador on 5 March 2020. Jack is a man of few words, married to a woman of many. He and Bet have been together for seventy years — almost a lifetime — and happily … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-565","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.urbanwords.org.uk\/sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.urbanwords.org.uk\/sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.urbanwords.org.uk\/sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.urbanwords.org.uk\/sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.urbanwords.org.uk\/sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.urbanwords.org.uk\/sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":611,"href":"http:\/\/www.urbanwords.org.uk\/sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/565\/revisions\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.urbanwords.org.uk\/sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}