‘We’ve lived charmed lives, all of us, because of our father. And yet we don’t know how to be anything. We don’t even know how to live ordinary lives. We don’t have the tools. It’s as if we expect greatness because our father was great. But we are not.’

Join us as we welcome Rachel Joyce – bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Music Shop – back to Penarth for the third time. Rachel’s latest novel The Homemade God explores memory, identity, grief, healing, and sibling bonds – what happens when they splinter, and what it takes to mend them. We expect this to be a very popular event, so book early to avoid disappointment!

The Homemade God:
Family is everything, even when it falls apart. World-famous artist Vic Kemp has relied on his children to run his life ever since their mother died when they were young. When he summons the four of them to dinner with the promise of good news, the siblings expect him to tell them he has finished the masterpiece that will be the capstone to his career. Instead, he announces that he’s remarrying. His bride-to-be, Bella-Mae, is beautiful, a fellow artist – and fifty years his junior. When they object, Vic decamps with Bella-Mae to his summer home in Italy. Six weeks later, he is dead.

Netta, Susan, Goose and Iris gather at the house on Lake Orta to piece together what has happened, locate their father’s will, and bring his body and final painting home.  Instead, they find themselves spending the summer under the same roof as Bella-Mae, forced to confront the various wounds they have incurred at the hands of their father and each other. How long can their family bonds hold? And is Bella-Mae the force that will destroy the family or set each of them free?

***

Rachel Joyce’s books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The critically acclaimed film of the novel, for which Rachel also wrote the screenplay, was released in 2023. Miss Benson’s Beetle won the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize in 2021. Rachel was awarded the Specsavers National Book Awards New Writer of the Year in December 2012 and was shortlisted for the UK Author of the Year in 2014. In 2024 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Kingston University. Rachel has written over twenty original afternoon plays and adaptations of the classics for BBC Radio 4. She lives with her family near Stroud.