Becoming Strangers

Longlisted for The Booker prize. Winner of The Betty Trask Prize. Winner of Le Prince Maurice. Nominated for The Guardian First Book Award. Longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award. Named by The Observer and The Independent as one of the best books of the year.

After more than half a century of marriage, Dorothy and George are embarking on their first journey abroad together. Three decades younger, Jan and Annemieke are taking their last, as illness and incompatibility bring their unhappy union to an end. At first the luxury of a Caribbean resort is no match for the well-worn patterns of domestic life. Then the couples' paths cross, and a series of surprises ensues--a disappearance and an assault, most dramatically, but also a teapot tempest of passions, slights, misunderstandings, and small awakenings that punctuate a week in which each pair struggles to come to terms with what's been keeping them apart.

A hit with readers and critics alike, Becoming Strangers is a different kind of love story, in which there's seldom a happy ending but sometimes a chance to redeem a life half-lived.

Louise Dean is founder and course director at the worldwide writing school for novelists The Novelry.