Rachel Joyce has written over 20 original afternoon plays for BBC Radio 4, and major adaptations for both the Classic Series, Woman's Hour and also a TV drama adaptation for BBC 2. In 2007 she won the Tinniswood Award for best radio play.She moved to writing after a twenty-year career in theatre and television, performing leading roles for the RSC, the Royal National Theatre, The Royal Court, and Cheek by Jowl, winning a Time Out Best Actress award and the Sony Silver.
2012 Booker Prize (longlist) : The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Rachel Joyce recommends
The Barbecue at No.9 (2026) Jennie Godfrey "Set against the backdrop of Live Aid, and covering everything from Jammy Dodgers to Queen, this is a delicious and irresistibly good-hearted story about ordinary lives and the dark secrets that lie behind the net curtains. What emerges is a plea for facing the things of which we are most afraid, even if it requires the help of a bowl of Twiglets. An utter treat."
Three Mothers (2025) Hannah Beckerman "Taut as a wire, Three Mothers is an emotionally raw page-turner of a book about family secrets, growing up, sibling rivalry and the lengths a mother will go to protect her children. The characterisation is sublime, the writing is wonderful, and I was gripped from the very first page."
Ghost Wedding (2025) David Park "A beautifully luminous and powerfully haunting piece of writing about the things that live in the shadows just beyond our reach."
33 Place Brugmann (2025) Alice Austen "Delicate and devastating, disruptive and beautiful, 33 Place Brugmann follows the intertwined lives of the residents of one building in Brussels during Nazi occupation - both within their individual apartments, and also as they try to make their way in the rapidly changing and diminishing outside world. Not only am I filled with admiration for the skill and ambition of this book, I also adored it. It's a celebration of love, art and human decency when everything is reduced to the basics. It's bursting with ideas and imagery, it finds courage and love amidst the ruins, and I read with my heart in my mouth."
Heart, Be at Peace (2024) Donal Ryan "Any new book by Donal Ryan is something to celebrate and Heart, Be at Peace is no exception. He is a powerful story teller immersed in all the intricacies of human relationships, and once again he brings us a novel with a heart as big as the community he describes. Clear-eyed, deeply ambitious, sharp, lyrical as always, by turns funny and terrifying, Donal Ryan shines his light in the darkest corners, and finds something for us to love. I am blown away by the ambition and scope of this exquisite piece of writing: Heart, Be at Peace is sublime in both its sentiment and beauty."
The Safekeep (2024) Yael van der Wouden "The Safekeep is a beautiful book, highly charged, tense, shocking and heartbreaking in equal measure... One of those rare books that feels as if it's been there all along, waiting to be given a voice. And what a voice this is."
Clear (2024) Carys Davies "An exquisite, hopeful masterpiece ... my favorite book of 2024 and probably many more years to come."
Held (2023) Anne Michaels "I was blown away by the scale, beauty, weave and thinking of this book . . . It dances with words, time and ideas in a way that seems to reinvent everything I know about the novel . . . and it's such a transporting read too. It's exquisite - I am in awe."
Earth's the Right Place for Love (2023) (Mason) Elizabeth Berg "This is a compassionate, witty, and delicate story about the people who find themselves on the sidelines and yet who manage - despite losses of their own - to be true to themselves and find their way. It's a celebration of small communities and the small kindnesses that, bit by bit, change a life."
Drift (2022) Caryl Lewis "A tender, unusual and gorgeously wrought love story."
Mother's Boy (2022) Patrick Gale "Mother's Boy beautifully celebrates the underdog. It is a celebration of love in hidden places, and love in ordinary places, and the courage required to be true to the person you are, when there is no road map to guide you. A sublime piece of storytelling."
French Braid (2022) Anne Tyler "There is no one who can weave a story like Anne Tyler, especially when it comes to family. Exquisitely crafted, tender, hilarious, devastatingly precise, I loved this powerful meditation on the small and often unvoiced moments that can make up a life, and shape the trajectory of the future."
Think of Me (2022) Frances Liardet "An epic and intensely moving novel that crosses the boundaries of place and time to weave a powerful story about overcoming the complications of love and grief - the things we try to spare one another, the things we cannot bear to see. It's a warm book, an intelligent one, richly observed, clear-eyed, and the generosity of its final pages moved me to tears."
Lessons in Chemistry (2022) Bonnie Garmus "Lessons in Chemistry is a vibrant and original story of hope and staying true to yourself. Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and brimming with life and generosity and courage."
The Fell (2021) Sarah Moss "The Fell reflects the lives we have been living for the last 18 months in a way no other writer has dared to do. There is wit, there is compassion, there is a tension that builds like a pressure cooker. This slim, intense masterpiece is one of my best books of the year."
The Paper Palace (2021) Miranda Cowley Heller "Beautifully written, richly compelling, The Paper Palace is as dark and uncompromising as it is tender and lyrical. Here is a love triangle that keeps you turning the pages, a vivid evocation of place, and an exploration of the one of the most unsettling of secrets."
I Couldn't Love You More (2021) Esther Freud "This exquisite family saga reads as a love letter between four generations of women. Everything is here; family ghosts, the bond between mothers and daughters, cruelty, endurance, the difficulty of love, and a faith in the possibility of healing - even after years of separation. This tender, elegant book delivers an emotional punch that left me in tears."
Surrogate (2021) Susan Spindler "A brilliantly structured, fast-paced and addictively compelling read. I loved the ending most of all."
A Tidy Ending (2020) Joanna Cannon "A compellingly crafted, darkly funny and compulsive read, full of twists... a joy and a triumph."
Coming Up For Air (2020) Sarah Leipciger "From the first page, I was gripped not only by the scale of the narrative but the sheer fierce beauty of the writing. Here is a novel that dares to cross the boundaries of time, the elements, life and death, and does so with the twists and hooks and magic of a consummate story teller."
The Snakes (2019) Sadie Jones "Masterful, terrifying, dangerous, with an ending that is as uncompromising as the build-up is truthful. The Snakes is as beautifully written as it is dark and honest."
The Heavens (2019) Sandra Newman "I was gripped, moved, terrified and finally uplifted by this glittering, unforgettable story."
The Distance Home (2018) Paula Saunders "Set in a landscape at once stark and beautiful, here is a luminous novel about the intricacies of family life and family love . . . Heartbreaking, full of compassion, and prose that feels it has always been there, not even forged from nothing, but essentially true. I haven’t read anything this good in a long time."
Meet Me At the Museum (2018) Anne Youngson "A moving tribute to friendship and love, to the courage of the ordinary, and to starting again."
Tomorrow (2018) Damian Dibben "Ornate, vivid, deeply colored, and so precise I could smell and taste the world ... the story of a dog crossing continents and centuries in search of the man he loves is moving and tender. I was captivated by its charm from the beginning."
White Chrysanthemum (2018) Mary Lynn Bracht "I read Hana and Emi's story with my heart in my mouth... A bold, devastating, important novel shot through with hope and beauty."
The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night (2017) Jen Campbell "Interwoven with myth and fairy tale, these stories are surprising, delightful, and by turns dangerous and joyful, like walking through a mirror and discovering a world that you both recognise and have never seen before."
