Evenings and Weekends

Over the hottest summer on record, a group of interconnected Londoners love, laugh and struggle through their messy lives in McKenna's vibrant, kaleidoscopic debut.

This city stops for no-one. Not the half-naked boozers, stoners, and cruisers, the hen parties glugging from bejewelled bottles, the drag queens puffing on hurried fags. It’s June 2019 in London and everyone has converged on the parks, beer gardens and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive.

Everyone but Maggie. She’s 30, pregnant and broke. Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she’s wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie’s best friend Phil and harbouring secret dreams of his own.

Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith. But there’s a problem: Keith has a boyfriend and there might not be room for three people in the relationship. Then there’s Rosaleen, Phil’s mother, who’s tired of feeling like a side character in her own life. She’s just been diagnosed with cancer and is travelling to London to tell Phil, if she can ever get hold of him.

As Saturday night approaches, all their lives are set to change forever. It’s the hottest summer on record and the weekend is about to begin.

MEDIA REVIEWS

'A gorgeous, kaleidoscopic vision of London written in shimmering prose I felt compelled to underline. I was deeply moved by its beauty and humanity.’ Coco Mellors, author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein

'A masterpiece. This searing tale of love, sex and class will resonate for generations to come' Owen Jones

'Electric and intimate. Bottles the exhilaration of youthful desire and possibility, as well as the accompanying instability' Guardian

‘I’ve never seen London so vividly rendered: grubby, sexy, suffocating. I couldn’t put it down. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant’ Shon Faye

'Full of rich observations and emotional detail. A complex love letter to the city.' Vogue

‘A beautiful, wise book. Impossibly, ineffably beautiful.’ Russell T Davies

'Compelling, brilliant, hypnotic. An impressive debut, pulsating with energy, humour and erotic charge.' Irish Times

‘I loved it so much I didn't want it to end. It made me choke up not from tragedy but from the sheer humanity of it' Annie Lord

'The only beach (or back garden) read for those in the know' Sunday Times Magazine

'A book you itch to return to' Eva Wiseman, Guardian

'The book of the summer' Dazed

'McKenna’s evocative prose paints a love letter to London in all its grimy glory’ Service 95

'Tender and addictive. Perfect summer reading.' i Paper

'Heartfelt, vivid and sexy' London Standard

‘A love letter to cities and people and heartbreaks. It made me cry’ Eileen Myles

‘Astonishing. A magnificent read’ Russell Tovey

'The book insiders will be passing on to everyone this summer' Stylist

‘Sexy, clever and shockingly alive. I have never read a book that captures what London feels like so compellingly’ Tomasz Jedrowski

'The aching, swelling humanity of this book swallowed me whole' Saba Sams

'Zadie Smith-esque in its kaleidoscope of London. Compassionate, intelligent, hilarious' Niamh Campbell

'A novel brimming with life' Nicola Dinan

'Stunning. Guaranteed to be one of the books of the summer' Hero 'I was entirely consumed by it.’ Kate Young