The Golden Rule

Author(s): Amanda Craig

Fiction

'A highly enjoyable story about female resilience and finding fulfilment on your own terms' Sunday Times

'An irresistible summer read' Guardian Book of the Day

'A typically sharp and hugely satisfying page-turner' Daily Mail

'Such a skilful story-teller, who vividly dramatizes our lives with wit, wisdom and compassion' Bernardine Evaristo

When Hannah is invited into the first-class carriage of the London to Penzance train, she walks into a spider's web. Now a poor young single mother, she once escaped Cornwall to go to university, but after marriage to Jake her dreams turned to bitter disillusion. Her husband has left her for a rich woman, and Hannah has survived by working as a cleaner. Jinni is equally angry and bitter, and in the course of their journey the two women agree to murder each other's husbands. After all, they are strangers on a train - who could possibly connect them?

But when Hannah goes to Jinni's house she meets its shambolic caretaker, who claims Jinni is very different to the person Hannah had been led to believe. Who is telling the truth - and what will become of the women's pact to commit a terrible crime?

'Exquisite escapism . . . comfort and wit, compassion and philosophical speculation' Hephzibah Anderson, Observer

'A highly enjoyable story about female resilience . . . with a twist that is all the more compelling for its unexpectedness' Mika Ross-Southall, Sunday Times


The Times - Books for 2020

Sunday Times - Books to look out for in 2020

Observer - Fiction to look out for in 2020, Alex Preston: 'The Golden Rule does what her novels do best, wrapping the reader in a tight, lean narrative, showing the strangeness that lies at the heart of normal-seeming lives'

Daily Mail - 2020 Top Pick, Stephanie Cross: 'Craig's The Golden Rule promises to be a typically sharp and hugely satisfying page-turner about two women who decide to murder each other's husbands'

i paper - 'If there were any justice, the versatile Craig would be one of our most lauded novelists. Her eighth novel [The Golden Rule] takes inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train to spin a story of deception and deceit'

New Statesman - Books for 2020

Financial Times - Books for 2020 'shrewd contemporary satirist Amanda Craig reworks Strangers on a Train'



Praise for Amanda Craig

'Terrific, page-turning, slyly funny' India Knight
'As satisfying a novel as I have read in years' Sarah Perry
'Amanda Craig is one of the most brilliant and entertaining novelists now working in Britain' Alison Lurie


Product Information

Longlisted Women's Prize Fiction 2021

General Fields

  • : 9780349143484
  • : Little, Brown Book Group Limited
  • : Abacus
  • : 0.3
  • : April 2021
  • : ---length:- '19.8'width:- '12.6'units:- Centimeters
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Amanda Craig
  • : Paperback
  • : 2107
  • : 823.92
  • : 400