Island Calling
'Beguiling ... Segal is writing in a comic tradition that runs from Jane Austen to David Nicholls' Observer
What if your mother knows you better than you know yourself?
On remote Tuga de Oro, vet Charlotte Walker has been taken to the islanders’ hearts and, between days on the farms and nights with a new love interest, she’s content to remain in blissful retreat from her real life, in London.
Just for now, obviously.
Until real life hits the island with the force of a tropical storm: Charlotte’s mother arrives.
Lucinda Compton-Neville knows an identity crisis when she sees one, and has come to haul her daughter back on course: back to England, back to her career, back home where she belongs.
Funny, moving, and hope-filled, Island Calling is the joyous second novel in the Tuga Island Trilogy – about mothers and daughters; about holding on and letting go.
READERS LOVE ISLAND CALLING:
‘The perfect summer holiday read’
‘Thoroughly enjoyable’
‘A fabulous return to the wonderful Island of Tuga’
‘I adore all the characters’
PRAISE FOR WELCOME TO GLORIOUS TUGA:
‘A much-needed escape, I warmly recommend this beauty’ NIGELLA LAWSON
‘A magical novel, so uplifting, heartwarming, funny . . . One of my favourite books OF ALL TIME’ MARIAN KEYES
‘Brilliantly and thoroughly imagined. I didn’t want to go home’ NICK HORNBY
‘Sparkling and sophisticated’ JESSIE BURTON
Francesca Segal is an award-winning writer. She is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Innocents (2012) and The Awkward Age (2017), and a memoir of NICU motherhood, Mother Ship (2019). Her writing has won the 2012 Costa First Novel Award, a Betty Trask Award, and been longlisted for the Women's Prize.
Segal says: 'Writing this trilogy was a deliberate reaching out for joy. The world can feel very bleak, and bringing Tuga to life became my own magical portal to wide beaches, crystal seas, endless sunshine, and most vitally, to a warm, eccentric community of good people mostly just trying to do their best. Tuga de Oro was a refuge for its first settlers, and I hope will offer refuge for readers, too.'