Permission

Jo Bloom

Description

Intelligent commercial/literary fiction, perfect for book clubs. Permission is a new direction in genre for the author. Her first novel, Ridley Road, was recently adapted for BBC One and generated extensive press coverage.

Sujets

• Romance
• Polyamory
• Marriage
• Poliamor
• Monogamy
• Sarah Dunn
• The Arrangement
• Modern Romance
• Middle age
• Open relationship
• Standard deviation
• Middle Ages

Informations

• Publié par: Legend Press
• Date de parution: 28 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781915054579
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for
Permission
I was completely absorbed by this fascinating contemporary story about love and marriage. It lays bare some of our most cherished beliefs about romantic relationships, then delicately tears them apart. Beautifully written and subtly observed, it s full of believable characters whose every feeling and behaviour makes perfect sense. It s written with such emotional intelligence but it s also a pacy page-turner; I sped through it and now need to read it again more slowly to savour it properly. Highly recommended.
Beth Miller, author of The Missing Letters of Mrs Bright
Intelligent, finely written, morally complex. Perfect for book clubs seeking their next what would you do read.
Tammy Cohen, author of Stop at Nothing
I loved Permission . A deep-dive into a contemporary marriage, it asks a deceptively simple question - what happens if we want more? - and answers with a story that is utterly compelling; full of surprises, yet always real. A novel of our moment. I couldn t put it down.
Alex Hourston, author of In my House
Prescient, completely believable and slightly terrifying. Permission looks at the age-old dilemma of whether monogamy can ever be enough. I was drawn to Fay and her need to define herself outside the confines of family life, while every other character navigates their own, sometimes rocky, often exciting, path through non-monogamy. Brilliantly drawn, I loved it.
Rebecca Whitney, author of The Liar s Chair
A total binge-read. Characters you can fully invest in, stunning dialogue and a satisfyingly unpredictable story - one of my favourite reads of the year so far.
Fiona Mitchell, author of The Swap and The Maid s Room
Bravo to Jo Bloom for writing the novel all married people, especially women, want to read. Permission is an honest, thoughtful, entertaining and intricately-crafted novel about the realities of marriage in middle age. The alternating points of view work especially well and both the husband and wife, Steve and Fay, feel totally familiar and real but also fresh and nuanced enough that it s impossible to stop turning the pages.
Elyssa Friedland, author of The Intermission
A very sensitive and thoughtful approach to a complex and emotive issue the characters really came to life on the page and have stayed with me.
Laura Barnett, bestselling author of The Versions of Us and Greatest Hits

Legend Press Ltd, 51 Gower Street, London, WC1E 6HJ
[e-mail] | www.legendpress.co.uk
Contents Jo Bloom 2022
The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
Print ISBN 978-1-91505-4-562
Ebook ISBN 978-1-91505-457-9
Set in Times. Printing managed by Jellyfish Solutions Ltd
Cover design by Rose Cooper | www.rosecooper.com
All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.
Esther Perel quote reprinted with permission.
Quote from Perel, Esther. Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, p.211. Hodder Stoughton. Kindle Edition.
Copyright 2007 by Esther Perel
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Jo Bloom s debut novel, Ridley Road , was published in 2014 and recently adapted into a major four-part series for BBC One. Jo has worked as a freelancer in the communications field for over twenty years, with a focus on arts publicity and e-learning. She also contributed to the book review section of Time Out, London for a few years. Prior to this, she lived and worked in Prague and New York. She now lives in Brighton with her family. Permission is her first contemporary novel.
Visit Jo
www.jobloom.com or follow on Instagram @jobloomauthor
The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable.
Esther Perel
1
Fay and Steve are each struggling with a drunk person in their living room, only she is pulling Katie up and he is holding Matt back.
When Matt s voice grows even angrier, Fay pushes Katie into the kitchen and quickly locks the door. Katie clutches a countertop, then slides to the floor with her back to a cupboard.
Hey, none of that, Fay hears Steve shout. Come on, mate. Behave.
Katie moans and tucks her lowered head into her arms as Fay steps over her to get to the sink. I ll only be a sec, she says, her hands trembling as she pours a glass of water.
The speed at which Katie and Matt s relationship has disintegrated makes Fay feel vulnerable and scared for herself, like she might be passing by a terrible accident on the motorway. Part of her would like to ask them to go straight away, so they can sort themselves out in their own home, but something in her is also compelled to look. Irritatingly, she hadn t even felt like having people over this evening, but Katie kept dropping hints about having a free weekend and offered to make her mum s jerk chicken if Fay did the rice. And actually, it had been a fun evening until ten minutes ago. The chat had been lively, and Fay had drunk almost as much as the others, which she never normally did.
Fay crouches down next to Katie and hands her the glass. Drink this.
Katie bats it away. I want red.
Jesus, it s water. Fay closes Katie s hands around the glass. Do you think I m going to give you more wine?
In between big sips, Katie whimpers and has a little cry. Fay has never seen her so fragile. It is almost like she has a stranger in her kitchen, not a close friend of ten years.
I m sorry, Katie says again. I didn t want to tell anyone. But I should have told you.
These past few months, Katie has been writing poetry while Matt is out playing football - sweet, soppy lines about love that she stores in a shoebox under their bed. The other night on the phone, she read Fay a poem about the man in her life, which is how Fay came to tease Matt about being married to someone writing him love poems. Matt had jumped up from the sofa and bent over Katie, jabbing a finger at her. What love poems? What does she mean? He kept rubbing his face with his palms. He might not have known for definite there was another man in her life, but Fay could tell that he d had his suspicions. She had mistakenly told him what he hadn t wanted to believe.
What s his name? she asks.
Nathan. I really like him, Fay, says Katie. It s electric.
Electric. This isn t a word Fay has ever heard Katie use before - maybe she picked it up from Nathan - but it s a description that doesn t lie. When she starts saying that she can t get enough of him, her voice is so lit with excitement Fay feels weirdly put out. She doesn t think she s jealous, but it s hard not to feel sidelined by Katie s breathless commentary.
How long has it been going on? she cuts in.
Five months.
Five months! Bloody hell. Fay gets up and opens the cupboard above the oven. Reaching up, she rummages around for the pack of cigarettes and lighter she keeps hidden behind the baking trays. She s not a regular smoker, this pack is probably six months old, and the tobacco feels a bit crispy, but it s the right time for one. I can t believe you kept it to yourself for that long, she says, putting a cigarette between her lips.
At least once a fortnight, Fay and Katie go to the cinema or swim lengths at the leisure centre pool. They WhatsApp each other several times a week. At weekends they might walk Katie s dogs across the local fields, sometimes for hours on end. It seems unbelievable that Fay didn t even have an inkling.
Are you hurt I didn t tell you?
It s not about me. Fay takes a puff. So, it started after Matt quit his job?
Katie nods. Almost ten months ago, just after his fortieth birthday, Matt left his job as a mortgage broker to give his songwriting one last push. Now or never, guys, he kept saying. He didn t need to convince Fay. She turned forty the year before last. Although she threw a phenomenal party, an unexpected sorrow about getting older came over her that she hasn t yet fully shaken off.
It s hard to support him, says Katie through tears. He wants so much from me.
Matt used to complain regularly about his job, but now this has translated into regular anxiety over his decision to quit. He speaks a lot about how he s in touch with different record labels, but it always sounds like an apology, as if deep down he knows success will never come. At dinner, Katie talked about all the baking he s been doing. Yesterday he made mini Victoria sponges, the size of muffins. She laughed as she was talking, calling him Matt Berry, but it was a contemptuous laugh and Matt stayed quiet the whole time.
I didn t mean him to find out like this, she moans. Don t judge me.
Fay puts her arm around Katie s shoulders and pulls her close. Don t be daft. Fay has been with Steve for twenty-two years. She understands what it s like to love the bones of a person, yet for your heart to feel like it might suffocate under the familiarity.
You get it, don t you? Katie glances sideways at her. I mean, you fantasise too. There was that guy from your spin class.
Yeah. That was just a silly crush though.
You said you couldn t get him out of your head.
Okay. Fay gets to her feet and stubs out the cigarette on a dirty plate in the sink. It s obvious where this conversation is heading. Katie needs a co-conspirator. She wants to make herself feel better by maki