Reviews
Hello Magazine
"This is a brave, bold, warm, rich, amusing, engaging novel..." Read full review here.
Daily Mail - See the review on The Daily Mail website
"Fortysomething Philippa has just had her first baby — a crossroad like no other and, as she searches the face of her tiny daughter, she reprises her own past.
What an extraordinary story it is … of abandonment by her mother, of growing up in the Sixties over a sweet shop in Torquay, of bitter-sweet childhood friendships and premature death, of seaside delights and a wobbly progress to adulthood.
A born storyteller with a gift for characterization, she writes with warmth, lovely earthy detail and a pathos which keeps a lump lodged in the throat. The final parcelling up of the plot might feel over neat for some readers but, with its echoes of Victoria Wood and Laurie Graham, it is a cracking first novel."
Margaret Graham
"Sophie Duffy is a talent to be reckoned with. She writes with empathy, clarity and huge skill. Read The Generation Game and enjoy!"
David Smith (agent)
"Sophie Duffy's debut novel is The Generation Game. This is the marvellously inventive, warm, amusing and moving account of the first forty years in the life of Philippa Smith, hapless but determined, intelligent but rash, abandoned but loved.
The Generation Game takes us back through a 60s and 70s childhood as we watch Philippa grow up in a world uncannily familiar to many of us. So many of Philippa’s experiences and defining moments are echoed in our own memories, and yet her life and family is bizarrely different. As her own real family crumbles away in betrayal she gradually acquires a new, accidental, ramshackle, loving one, populated with misfits and dreamers. As the story of her life unfolds we come to know and love our indomitable, reckless heroine, and as the secrets of her and her family’s past slowly surface we find ourselves rooting for her more than ever in her search for happiness.
Sophie Duffy’s debut is a thoroughly warm-hearted novel but it has a hard edge that reminds us how frightening and desperate life can get. As a work in progress it won Sophie the 2006 Yeovil Literary Prize. She is a writer with a very bright future."
Katie Fforde (novelist and judge)
"This is very powerful writing. You draw your reader in immediately and combine wit and poignancy to very powerful effect. It is very slightly reminiscent of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, by Kate Atkinson, but not in a bad way. I really look forward to reading the rest in book form. Excellent. Well done!"
