Frankie. A Novel

"Warm and wise, Frankie is a woman worth getting to know."-Bonnie Garmus, New York Times-bestselling author of Lessons in ChemistryFrom the internationally bestselling author and host of The Graham Norton Show, a dazzling and decades-sweeping work of historical fiction about love, bravery, and what it means to live a significant life. Always on the periphery, looking on, young Frankie Howe was never quite sure enough of herself to take center stage-after all, life had already judged her harshly.
Now old, Frankie finds it easier to forget the life that came before. Then Damian, a young Irish caretaker, arrives at her London flat, there to keep an eye on her as she recovers from a fall. A memory is sparked, and the past crackles into life as Damian listens to the coming of age story Frankie has kept stored away all these years. Traveling from post-war Ireland to 1960s New York-a city full of art, larger-than-life characters and turmoil-Frankie shares a world in which friendship and chance encounters collide.
A place where, for a while, life blazes with an intensity that can't last but will perhaps live on in other ways and in other people.