Sarah Connell
From seven to seventy there is a line, an invisible one that only I can see. From the child who sat in the library, too shy and too unconfident to admit to the questioner that she wanted to be a writer, the line stretches to my seventieth birthday celebration when my debut novel 'Whenever' was launched. What connects them is the years of a full family and working life, when the notebooks filled up, the drafts were abandoned, ideas dreamed of and lost, and I never admitted out loud that I was always writing.
So here I am about to see the publication of my third novel 'Where Are You Now?'.
'Whenever' is the story of a woman who wakes up to find her husband has left her in the night. It won the Cinnamon Debut Novel Prize,'a distinctive voice', and was published in 2019. 'Random Three, published a year later, follows a young mother struggling to bring up her little boy alone and the two women who try to help her.
'Where Are You Now' is the story of a friendship beween two men, one settled, retired, resistant to change and the other a refused asylum seeker on the run from the authorities. Should Walter help Osama once he realises he has lied?
This novel was longlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Prize 2021 for women writers of 'literary merit and unputdownability.'
I write social fiction, with a focus on characters and the setting is my adopted home town in Yorkshire, Wakefield.
Sarah Connell's Books
£8.99
Where Are You Now?
28 Apr 2023This is not the Garden of Eden, but it is my patch of heaven. Steal my apples. Come and get them.
When an asylum seeker is discovered sleeping rough at an allotment site, the plot-holders are alarmed and hostile. However, in secret, Walter begins to leave out food for Osama. Thus, a friendship begins on a garden bench, between a grieving widower and an asylum seeker on the run from the authorities.
Walter is rooted in his home city; Osama belongs nowhere. Walter has a safe and routine life; Osama’s life is uncertain, risky and vulnerable. Walter feels powerless to help him, while at the same time he struggles to understand his own daughters and their lives. Then, one day, Walter discovers Osama is not who he says he is…
Sarah Connell lives in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. Her debut novel, Whenever, won the Cinnamon Novel Prize in 2017 and she is also the author of Random Three, published in 2020 by the Book Guild. Where Are You Now? is her third novel and was longlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Prize ‘for women writers of literary merit and “unputdownability”’ in 2021.