Quicksand Tales

“This is laugh-out-loud, delightful comedic writing. It captures a mood of escapism and nostalgia that I found incredibly reassuring and cheering. More Keggie, please.”

“Carew is a natural storyteller, and each of these tales works like a perfectly paced stand-up routine, punctuated by some gorgeous phrase-making… It’s hard to make writing look this easy, but Carew’s stories have the knack of easing the reader happily from page to page, leaving us squirming at the situations she finds herself in while secretly hoping that she won’t escape them just yet”

“Sensitive readers may have to pause between chapters to recover their equilibrium, and every reader will end the book astonished that she’s still alive. Uncategorisable, unignorable and unique, this is already one of my books of the year.”

“Keggie Carew really has a knack for stepping in it, boy.  But the further you wade in with her, the more hilarious, and poignant, it all becomes. Quicksand Tales is a tonic for the tortured and cursed.”

“Carew excel[s] at pinpointing the disjointedness between the life we boast about and the messy lives we actually end up living.”

“Quicksand Tales is animated by Carew’s gift for storytelling: a lightness of touch is coupled with a revelry in caricature … Quicksand Tales is vibrant and entertaining, sure to inspire a healthy dose of schadenfreude in its readers.”

“If the January blues have you pining for far-flung adventures, these chatty, candid personal essays will set you straight…Carew’s response is always hilariously, toe-curlingly relatable ... Wish you were here? Not likely, but Carew’s postcards from home and abroad are a joyous burst of authenticity.”

“Wonderfully written … very funny and full of life.”

“…written by the author of the sublime, Costa-winning Dadland … an epic series of hilarious misadventures from a life characterised by her unerring instinct for being in the wrong place at the wrong time…”

“Carew has a beautiful evocative style.”

“Keggie is chaos in motion, yearning for everything to go right and, luckily for us, it rarely does. She has a wonderfully sharp eye for character, draws every scene so vividly and it’s funny, witty. Never arch. Funny. And awful.”

“Keggie’s honesty and empathy shine through; as a reader, you’ll whip through these tales alternately laughing and wincing in recognition.”

“Keggie Carew blazes a trail for the more earthbound and hapless among us in her brilliant and hilarious Quicksand Tales…She reveals her unerring instinct for making a toe-curling hash of things, from being persuaded to buy a camel to a wincingly awful birthday.”

“Keggie Carew…returns with Quicksand Tales, an entertaining collection of stories from her fascinating – if somewhat misadventurous – life.”

“These stories are informed by the same wit, sharpness of perception and intelligence which characterised her bestselling biography…[Keggie] has style and panache and her stories are entertainingly told.”