Synopsis
"Gripping - and profound... Kate Sawyer has a great gift for capturing the tiny details that tell us everything about a person or dynamic." -- Marian Keyes
"From its brilliant, ambitious premise (a story told through family holidays) to its complex and wholly absorbing characters, Getting Away is a moving insight into the beautiful complexity of ordinary lives." -- Jennie Godfrey
Margaret Smith is at the beach.
It is a summer day unlike any other Margaret has ever known.
The Smith family have left the town where they live and work and go to school and come to a place where the sky is blue, the sand is white, and the sound of the sea surrounds them. An ordinary family discovering the joy of getting away for the first time.
Over the course of the coming decades, they will be transformed through their holiday experiences, each new destination a backdrop as the family grows and changes, love stories begin and end -- and secrets are revealed.
Getting Away is a dazzlingly ambitious new novel from the author of Waterstones' Fiction Book of the Month, This Family, and the Costa shortlisted The Stranding.
'A wonderfully immersive and ambitious novel, which charts one family's triumphs, tragedies and everything in between, through the holidays they take over eight decades. From windy, stony British beaches to a Spanish timeshare and a fancy trip to New York, this is the perfect holiday read.' Sarra Manning, Red magazine
'Lyrical, nostalgic and heartfelt, it's a powerful story about confronting life's unexpected turns' - Woman & Home
'Wonderfully-layered ... perfect for reading on the beach.' - Best magazine
'There is real affection in Getting Away for the intimate details of ordinary lives.' - Stylist magazine
'Dazzling prose and an evocative sense of place make this a terrific novel to get lost in this summer.' - The i Paper
'Perfect travel companion ... a living postcard marked with love, loss and connection.' - Sainsbury's Magazine
"From its brilliant, ambitious premise (a story told through family holidays) to its complex and wholly absorbing characters, Getting Away is a moving insight into the beautiful complexity of ordinary lives." -- Jennie Godfrey
Margaret Smith is at the beach.
It is a summer day unlike any other Margaret has ever known.
The Smith family have left the town where they live and work and go to school and come to a place where the sky is blue, the sand is white, and the sound of the sea surrounds them. An ordinary family discovering the joy of getting away for the first time.
Over the course of the coming decades, they will be transformed through their holiday experiences, each new destination a backdrop as the family grows and changes, love stories begin and end -- and secrets are revealed.
Getting Away is a dazzlingly ambitious new novel from the author of Waterstones' Fiction Book of the Month, This Family, and the Costa shortlisted The Stranding.
'A wonderfully immersive and ambitious novel, which charts one family's triumphs, tragedies and everything in between, through the holidays they take over eight decades. From windy, stony British beaches to a Spanish timeshare and a fancy trip to New York, this is the perfect holiday read.' Sarra Manning, Red magazine
'Lyrical, nostalgic and heartfelt, it's a powerful story about confronting life's unexpected turns' - Woman & Home
'Wonderfully-layered ... perfect for reading on the beach.' - Best magazine
'There is real affection in Getting Away for the intimate details of ordinary lives.' - Stylist magazine
'Dazzling prose and an evocative sense of place make this a terrific novel to get lost in this summer.' - The i Paper
'Perfect travel companion ... a living postcard marked with love, loss and connection.' - Sainsbury's Magazine
Details
03 July 2025
9781804189139Imprint: Zaffre
Reviews
From its brilliant, ambitious premise (a story told through family holidays) to its complex and wholly absorbing characters, Getting Away is a moving insight into the beautiful complexity of ordinary lives.
Reading this book takes you around the world; telling the story of a family through multiple generations all through the holidays they take - it's Behind The Scenes At The Museum meets One Day! An absorbing, intricate novel perfect for getting away, wherever you are.
Deeply moving and genuinely unputdownable ... previously, the last time a book made me pause reading to phone a loved one to tell them I love them was Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason; I did it again after Getting Away.
A multi-generational epic of vacations: Kate Sawyer tells a moving story of the joys, secrets, heartbreaks, and reversals of one family's lineage with transporting vignettes of holidays reflecting the seismic shifts in travel and society. This propulsive novel is a century's worth of wisdom on how getting away from home can lead us to get closer to the mysteries of who we really are.
