This book revolves around three friends. The characters are very relatable.
This book made me laugh and cry. The ending of this book is just so perfect.

Funny, witty, happy, sad. A proper heartwarming read. I throughly enjoyed reading this book, never wanted it to end.
Thank you to both the publishers and NetGalley for gifting me this book.

A book about 4 old people sounds like my cup of tea, but unfortunately i struggled with the slow burn character driven nature of the writing.

I really enjoying the writing and how much you got to understand and know the characters. A little gem!

This novel follows three older women who are returning to their friend Sylvie’s home to clear it out after her death. The four women had been friends for many years but there are secrets being kept and also the difficulties of how they’ve all changed over the years that all have to be dealt with over the course of one weekend. Jude is very self-controlled and likes everything to be just so. Wendy is more eccentric and goes with the flow so when she turns up with her elderly, incontinent dog Jude is horrified. Adele is an out of work actress who is on the brink of being homeless and can’t bring herself to tell her oldest friends of her latest plight. I loved the writing in this novel; it’s the first I’ve read by Charlotte Wood and it won’t be the last. I found it hard to warm to any of the characters at first but as the novel goes on and we see the vulnerabilities of the women I couldn’t help but feel sadness at what life had thrown at them. This is a melancholy, reflective novel but it still left me feeling hopeful. I enjoyed this novel and I recommend it!

I really wanted to love this book and it wasn't that I disliked it I just felt that for some reason I couldn't connect with the story or the characters much. ,. I loved the idea behind it and I love the setting as anything in Australia always wins for me but I felt there was something missing.. I think I was expecting more plot and more intrigue after reading so many highly rated reviews.
I wouldn't be put off reading more from the author as I did like her style but sadly for me this just didn't live up to the hype.

There are a couple of things that are evident about this book straight away....that Charlotte Wood is immensely talented (the stars are for her words!) And that this is a really emotional book.

Jude, Wendy and Adele are all really difficult characters. I didn't like any of them. This makes it difficult for me as I am mainly a character driven reader and to truly enjoy a book I need to have strong emotions of either hate or love.. and I didn't feel either...just didn't particularly like them.

They all appeared morally repugnant. Jude and her belief she was a good person when she clearly wasn't. Wendy keeping her suffering dog alive for selfish reasons and Adele who thought she was better than everyone else.

It is also a very stark and real look at grief especially the anger involved in grief which I applaud...but found very difficult to read. Anyone experiencing grief will find it hard to read and anyone that doesn't understand grief will find it difficult to understand...so its always a tough thing to write about. Charlotte Wood does this very well.

Personally I found the realities of grief hard to read...which meant I kept picking up and putting down the book...which also didn't help for enjoyment as I normally go through books quickly and due to the characters and how difficult they were it was hard to get back into their mind set on each return.
Had they been easier to relate to characters though, I might have found it easier.

Overall Charlotte Wood is hugely talented and her words and emotions are wonderful but the book as a whole was a struggle as I needed to connect with the characters and feel them more.

Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book coversthe lives of three life-long friends - Jude, Adele and Wendy. All so different but friends for over forty years. They get together for a weekend over Christmas to clear out the house of another dear friend, Sylvie, now sadly departed.

The story is all about the women whoare in their 70s and the book looks at what it is to age, to live, to have regrets, to consider the choices made along the way. It was not something I would normally read.

I have no strong feelings either postive or negative just it made a change to read about the lives of others at age we will hopefully all reach

I really tried to like this book based on the premise of friends getting together to clean out a lost friend’s home after dying. Why were these women friends for years? They didn’t seem to like each other. Made me feel uncomfortable and a bit sad, I love my friends!!

Sadly this was not for me. I just couldn't seem to connect with the characters or even get into the flow of the story. There are some fantastic reviews for this book so I know for definite it wasn't the book itself but more that I personally failed to connect with it. Such a shame as I love the description and have read some of the brilliant reviews and feel like I'm missing out! I also truly appreciate the love and effort that went into the book and am pleased that so many others enjoyed it so much.

Thank you Orion Publishing and Netgalley.

The Weekend is the story of three friends - Adele, Wendy and Jude - as they spend the Christmas weekend clearing out the home of their friend Sylvie who has died. With decades of friendship behind them we learn that relationships between those you hold closest are often the ones with the darkest secrets.

Golden Girls, The Weekend ain’t. The group of friends are trying their hardest to hold it together but with age comes a lot of things, mainly invisibility and negativity from others. Without Sylvie, the dynamic of the friends has changed and the balance leads to revelations about the past that may have stayed better buried.

Charlotte Wood’s The Weekend is a great story of the lasting power of friendship and how people should be allowed to grow old in any way and whatever fashion that way they want.

The Weekend by Charlotte Wood is available now.

For more information regarding Orion (@orionbooks) please visit www.orionbooks.co.uk.

“Adele and Wendy and Jude did not fit properly anymore, without Sylvie.”

The Weekend by Charlotte Wood is a searing and insightful portrait of friendship, ageing and grief.

“Because what was friendship, after forty years? What would it be after fifty, or sixty? It was a mystery. It was immutable, a force as deep and inevitable as the vibration of the ocean coming to her through the sand. Wasn’t it?”

Less than a year after the death of Sylvie, her lifelong closest friends -Jude, Wendy and Adele, are spending Christmas weekend emptying her holiday home in Bittoes on the NSW Central Coast. It’s a chore each of them have been dreading, and in the sweltering summer heat, the task threatens to tear them apart.

“‘This was something nobody talked about: how death could make you petty. And how you had to find a new arrangement among your friends, shuffling around the gap of the lost one, all of you suddenly mystified by how to be with one another.’”

Shifting perspectives reveal the complex inner lives of these women as they grieve, and bicker and reminisce. Wood explores the fragility and resilience of their friendship as old hurts resurface, resentments simmer, and secrets are laid bare.

“It was true that time had gradually taken on a different cast. It didn’t seem to go forwards or backwards now, but up and down. The past was striated through you, through your body, leaching into the present and the future. The striations were evident, these streaky layers of memory, of experience— but you were one being, you contained all of it. If you looked behind or ahead of you, all was emptiness.”

Aged in their seventies, the women keenly feel the passage of time, reflecting on their pasts, and contemplating their futures as they attend to their tasks. Having enjoyed successful careers, and relationships, they struggle with their losses, and what they have yet to lose. Ageing is an uncomfortable process for them all, though in different ways for different reasons. Wendy’s old and feeble dog, Finn, is a clear metaphor for its indignities.

“And each of the three let go, plunged down and felt herself carried, lifted up in the great sweep of the water’s force, and then—astonishingly gently—set down on her feet again. They breathed, and wiped their eyes, reached for each other again, waited for the next wave.”

Yet there is plenty of life left in these women, none are quite ready to submit to mortality.

Told with wit, tenderness and brutal honesty, The Weekend explores the mundane to expose the extraordinary.

The Weekend by Charlotte Wood is an enjoyable novel about women’s lives and friendship, getting older, grief and mortality.

I hate not finishing books. I very rarely DNF and even then it is with the greatest reluctance. I did however have to give up on The Weekend. Not long after starting it I realised this book wasn't going to be one for me but I persevered to give myself opportunity to get into it. Unfortunately, by 48% nothing really had happened, I didn't connect with the characters and wasn't really interested in them, and I just wasn't enjoying it.

This review is not a critique of the author in anyway; I hate being critical over something an author has no doubt put their blood, sweat and tears into, and at the end of the day, this is just my thoughts and opinion...! But this was just a plot that failed to grip me and I think maybe I wasn't the target audience for this book. Older readers may have more of an appreciation for The Weekend but this just wasn't for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, Charlotte Wood and Orion Publishing Group for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Weekend is an insightful tale of enduring friendship, secrets and betrayal. Jude, Wendy and Adele are gathering at the home of their late friend Sylvie in order to clear out her house ready for it to be sold. The women are in their mid-70s and have been friends for decades. Their relationships have survived marriages, children, miscarriages and divorce, but it’s fair to say that by the time they gather in Sylvie’s home to perform this last sad act for their friend (who was clearly the glue that held the group together), the tensions that have built up between them over the years are approaching boiling point and their diverse personalities are starting to drive them apart.

Firstly there’s Jude (‘Jude the martyr, Jude the boss’), a former restaurant manager who likes order and calm and everything to be done her way. She is horrified and exasperated when ditsy, eccentric academic Wendy brings her elderly, incontinent and very smelly dog with her, mainly because of the mess he makes but also because it just wasn’t part of Jude’s plan. And then there’s my favourite character, Adele. Spoilt, self-obsessed but gregarious, loving and very loveable, her glory days as an actress are mostly behind her but she longs to secure that final perfect role that will put the seal on a glorious career.

As the friends spend the weekend together in a confined space sorting through the belongings of their beloved friend, it’s almost inevitable that hidden resentments and long-buried secrets will come to the surface, leading to some pretty spectacular and dramatic rows. However, Wood has managed to portray really well the overriding affection and loyalty that underlies most long-standing relationships, no matter how much they drive each other mad! There are some touching moments as the friends unite against common enemies and I enjoyed the use of the elderly deaf and demented dog, Finn, who drags his arthritic bones around the house in search of somewhere comfortable to rest, as a metaphor for the state of the women’s friendship and their personal lives.

Plenty of and issues for a book group to discuss here and I could also see this making an excellent play or film with some really meaty roles for older actresses.

Really good read. Would recommend to friends and family. I could sympathise with characters (important for any fiction novel!) and looked forward to picking it up and reading the next few chapters! Interesting plot line and a good ending. Will look out for more novels by the author. Thank you.

I chose to read this novel purely as a lockdown escape but it turned out to be so much more than that. I could see aspects of myself and my friends in the three women, in their outlook, their fears and friendships. It is insightful in the way in which I now view my friendship circle...a sort of one day psychology class for the elderly! I have since read that Charlotte is only in her fifties but has so obviously researched the often superficial or even misrepresented understanding of her elders (that sounds so much better than ‘the elderly’).

I found the portrayal of Finn to be perplexing, is he Sylvie watching her friends through his eyes? Is he the way in which many younger people see anyone over sixty? Is he an advance warning of the end of life? A way of showing how in the last stages of life we should be treated kindly and not shut away? I really don’t know....perhaps all of this...or none of it...or more, or just an old dog.

It is stunningly written, always painting the picture in a such poetic way, her use of language is truly outstanding (or even awesome). I enjoyed every word, often re-reading sentences to be able to enjoy their beauty.

Thank you Netgalley, publisher and author for allowing me this copy in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this novel. It's not overly long and I inhaled it in almost a single sitting.

Three friends who don't always like each other spend a weekend packing up the house of a friend who has passed away.

It was refreshing to read something about older women that didn't mock them or make them in to caricatures. I thought the transitions between points of view were particularly well handled. The slights both real and imagined that each of them felt towards the others were investigated sensitively. I would find myself agreeing almost entirely with the pov we were in and then when it changed I would also change my mind.

There was so much depth to the simple story. Living through second-wave feminism in Australia, the changes in bodies, the fear of death and not being sure what they bring to the world anymore.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

‘The Weekend’ documents three friends who come together to clear out their recently deceased friend’s house. Wendy, her dog, Adele and Jude come together, and tensions rise and simmer below the surface. Over the years they have drifted, held on to past resentments and frustrations at things they have not said or incidents they have let pass.
Wood is so adept at moving between each of the characters in turn and creating fully formed individuals that are both sympathetic and achingly human. The tempo and tension steadily increases and the reader never feels quite comfortable or able to relax in this oppressive atmosphere. One way I feel Wood achieves this is through the depictions of Wendy’s aged and declining dog. Constantly in pain, at points delirious and frightened, Wendy clings to it perhaps longer than she should have in an attempt to hold on to memories of happier times.
I have not read many books that portray ageing or characters in old age so honestly and frankly. It made me reflect on the decisions we may make when we are young and how we will perceive them when we are older. The climactic moment within the novel was heart wrenching and stayed with me for a long time. I have read that some people have found this book depressing, but for me that was not the case. We all have the potential to change, make new connections and find life regardless of any number.

I absolutely flew through it. I love books like this, it was so refreshingly simple (in a magnificent way!) and really has the entrainment factor; heaps of humour, plenty of emotion and all the bits in between. The characters are very powerful in their own stubborn ways but I enjoyed them immensely. It is just a shame as to why they are meeting up; a passing of a mutual friend. It is an incredibly engaging read and you get a real good sense of each character and what their history is, plus a great snapshot of what old age is. Finn the Dog was a fabulous addition too. It is a wonderful tale and I absolutely loved it. The perfect book for a Sunday afternoon.