The House of Broken Bricks

'An almanac for the heart.'

EVIE WOODS, author of The Lost Bookshop

'Haunting prose that cracks the English pastoral novel and lets the darkness in. A pleasure to read.'

SARAH MOSS, author of Ghost Wall


'A clever, heartbreaking, heartwarming depiction of family love, grief and the possibility of hope.'

JO BROWNING WROE, author of A Terrible Kindness

'Poignant and unexpected . . . brave and subtle.'

EMMA HEALEY, author of Elizabeth is Missing

'Wonderful . . . brave in its deep truths about loss and love.'

INGRID PERSAUD, author of Love After Love


Ain't nothing wrong with being broken. Nothing at all. You're like these houses, not a whole brick in em and look how strong they are.

As Tess traces the sunrise over the floodplains, light that paints the house a startling crimson, she yearns for the comforting chaos of life as it once was. Instead of Max and Sonny tracking dirt through the kitchen - Tess and Richard's 'rainbow twins' - Tess absorbs the quiet. The nights draw in, the soil cools and Richard fights to get his winter crops planted rather than deal with the discussion he cannot bear to have.

Secrets and vines clamber over the broken red bricks and although its inhabitants seem to be withering, in the damp, crumbling soil Sonny knows that something is stirring . . . As the seasons change, and the cracks let in more light, the family might just be able to start to heal.

This is the story of a broken family, what they see and what they cannot say laid bare in their overlapping perspectives. It is a tale of life in the cracks, because in the space for acceptance, of passing and of laying to rest, the possibilities of new energy, light and love, are seeded.
Readers are loving The House of Broken Bricks:
***** 'It's only the first week of January and already I have a strong candidate for my book of the year.'

***** 'Fiona Williams' stunning nature-writing and poetic prose, turns a relatively simple story into a hauntingly beautiful experience.'

***** 'This is one of those books that stays with you long after you've finished reading it.'

*****'Absolutely spot-on in how it portrays children's emotional intuition, this is a beaut of a book.'

***** 'Blown away! This books is stunning and haunting and structurally beautiful.'


Genre: Literary Fiction

"The House of Broken Bricks is a truly sensory experience. I could feel, taste and see everything. The storytelling is incredibly tense and poignant and unexpected, and the subject so brave and subtle." - Emma Healey

"Shocking and powerful, it took me into a new experience. . . This is the best kind of story telling - characters I genuinely care about, and a narrative that demands to be followed." - Victoria Hislop

"I've lost count of the number of pitch perfect sentences in The House of Broken Bricks that I wanted to steal - a wonderful debut that is brave in its deep truths about loss and love in us and the promise of sunshine on even the darkest days." - Ingrid Persaud

"The House of Broken Bricks reads like an almanac for the heart and charts the seasons of one family's relationships with each other and themselves. Rich and earthy, it's one of those books that demands a quiet space for reflection, to savour the tangled nature that lives inside all of us." - Evie Woods

"A clever, heartbreaking, heartwarming depiction of family love, grief and the possibility of hope." - Jo Browning Wroe