Tortoise by Candlelight

It is a small book, acute, discreet and tender; it is also written with warm care and considerable taste – all qualities too easily overlooked

An exceptional picture of disorganised family life

Bawden is noted too for the sharp sense of humour that edges her tales of middle-class manners and mores towards satire, particularly when it all goes wrong

With the ferocity of a mother tiger defending her cubs, fourteen-year-old Emmie Bean watches over her household: her amiable drunken father, her gaunt, evangelical old grandmother, her beautiful, wayward sister Alice and most precious of all, eight-year-old Oliver, who has the countenance of an angel and the ethical sense of a cobra. But with the arrival of new neighbours, the outside world intrudes into the isolated privacy of family life and Emmie's kingdom is no longer secure. Combining the guile of a young child with the desperation of adolescence, Emmie fights to stave off the changes- and the revelations- that growing up necessarily brings.

Nina Bawden

Catriona Natasha Brooke's granny is totally unlike other people's grandmothers. When she isn't dressed in motorbike leathers, Granny the Pag wears dirty black skirts that trail on the ground and fastens her old sweaters with an enormous black broochencrusted with diamonds. Even worse, she smokes! The Pag can be a social embarrassment, but when Catriona's relationship with her is threatened, Catriona fights for the right to choose where she lives and who with - she chooses Granny the Pag.

Granny the Pag

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Kate-Atkinson

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

prhuk-authors

Discover the Penguin books that shaped us

Nina Bawden

Books by Nina Bawden

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter