SHORTLISTED FOR THE JQ WINGATE, 2017

My mother, my family and Judaism are nested inside each other. I am Jewish and always Jewish; it’s analogous with family, however hard it is, and however strained, it can never be disavowed… I remain, as my therapist put it, ‘enmeshed’, all tangled up in the family hoard. This book has been both a continuation of my conversations with them, and an attempt to untangle myself.

This is Joanne’s account of coming to terms with her brother’s suicide and through that process, the entirety of her family life. In Small Pieces Joanne explores her childhood, her Jewishness and her mother’s death as well as that of her brother.

The life and family Joanne describes is a complex combination of conflicting influences – both scientific and literary; Jewish and humanist impulses; and middle America and North London settings.

Small Pieces is a beautiful and searingly honest meditation on family and faith.