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Staunch cover art

Staunch

By: Eleanor Wood
Narrated by: Eleanor Wood
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Summary

A late 30s The Wrong Knickers meets Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Eleanor finds herself in her late 30s on a beach in India with three old ladies, trying to ‘find herself’ and ‘discover her family history’ like some sad middle-class crisis cliché. How did she get here? 

Truthfully, it could be for any one of the below reasons, if not all combined:

  • Stepmum dying/stepdad leaving – family falling apart, subsequent psychotic break; both parents now on third marriage
  • Breaking up with J after 12 years – breaking up a whole life, a whole fucking universe – for reasons that may have been...misguided?
  • New boyfriend moving in immediately, me insisting ‘it’s not a rebound!’ even after everyone has stopped listening, being cited in his messy divorce, him being sectioned, then breaking up with me
  • Going into therapy after dating a potentially violent, certainly threatening, narcissist (the most pertinent point of which should be noted: I did not break up with him – he ghosted me)

How to address this situation? Take a trip to India with your octogenarian nan and two great aunts of course. The perfect, if somewhat unusual, distraction from Eleanor’s ongoing crisis. 

But the trip offers so much more than Eleanor could ever have hoped for. 

Through the vivid and worldly older women in her life, she learns what it means to be staunch in the face of true adversity. 

©2020 Eleanor Wood (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"Warm and funny and unpretentious and wise." (Holly Bourne, author of Am I Normal Yet?)

"A fun and uplifting memoir." (Cosmopolitan)

 

What listeners say about Staunch

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This book is STAUNCH

I loved being part of Ellie’s world and meeting the Staunch women in her life. I will be recommending this to all of the women in my life, and to all of the women in their lives too.

Ellie’s trip to India with Nan, Rose and Ann made me miss my Oma and Granny intensely. I hope that they would consider me Staunch.

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Wonderful

I really loved Eleanor’s story. It left me feeling happy and wanting to listen to it all over again.

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Could have been great....

Sounds as though it was narrated by an automated voice machine. Grrrrrgraaaatttteeeed. The authors should be able to choose the narrator....if this one did it's a self sacrilegious act what could have been a wonderful escape read as the story really gripped me. To bad it sounded awful.

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