FROM THE AUTHOR OF A VAN OF ONE'S OWN
When Biddy Wells’s elderly mother is suddenly struck down with a mysterious illness, Biddy moves her into the spare bedroom, little knowing how long the period of convalescence will last.
Through the months that follow, the two women have to re-inhabit the close domestic proximity that they’d abandoned decades before and learn how to co-exist within a tangled web of emotional need, resentment and dependence.
Eventually, Biddy manages to find a supported flat that's ideal for her mother. She settles quickly and, abandoning her morbidly stoic outlook on life, falls passionately in love with another resident. Biddy can only watch from the sideline as her mother embarks on an unlikely romance.
Told with humour, wry insight, and refreshing honesty, Scrabble in the Afternoon examines the complicated, frustrating and ultimately rewarding story of how a daughter can come to terms with caring wholeheartedly for a mother. It also shows how a mother and daughter relationship can change and develop as life continues to offer fresh challenges and joys.
"Wells' responses to the sudden and unexpected challenge – complex and conflicting – are above all honest and human, and the pair's ultimate achievement of an improved relationship founded on mutual affection, respect and understanding is a quiet triumph." - Buzz Magazine
"An honest, insightful and engrossing memoir." - The Western Mail
"Beautifully observed and painfully honest. Scrabble in the Afternoon resonates and illuminates in equal measure." Wales Arts Review
"A refreshing and tender account of the obligations that entwine mother and daughter, and how these sometimes conflict with a life lived authentically, for both. Wells beautifully charts an evolving relationship, somewhere between loving care, dependence and surrender." - ABI ANDREWS, author of The Word for Woman Is Wilderness
"Biddy's book is warm and funny as well as brave and perceptive. " - KATE PAWSEY, writing for wellbeing facilitator and founder of Writing Time
"An honest, sometimes difficult, but ultimately uplifting read about a complicated mother/daughter relationship... The situations that Wells experienced were familiar and relatable, and she did a fantastic job of articulating the conflicting and complex emotions that affect both parties." – Amelia Edwards, Netgalley reviewer
Biddy Wells lives in west Wales. She is passionate about her writing. She walks daily and loves nature, especially the Pembrokeshire coast and hills. She has two grown up children and adores her relatively new role of grandmother. She loves to travel, particularly overland around Europe and she always loves to come home to Wales. Her first memoir, A Van of One's Own, was a best-seller and continues to strike a chord with readers.