‘My soul yearns to sit in an Irish pub and know everyone else is like me’: Kit de Waal’s tale of tragedy, yearning and hope

The distance between where we want to go in life and where we end up is often vast; nowhere more so than here, in Kit de Waal’s fifth novel. Paulette is madly in love with Denton and, in her late 20s, she sees their lovely life together unfolding in glorious Technicolor. There will be babies, there will be a wedding, there will be a lovely honeymoon in the Caribbean, where Paulette spent most of her childhood and where Denton has family too.

.