The Widow's Tale

Mick Jackson

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2010
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571258710
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

A newly-widowed woman has done a runner. She just jumped in her car, abandoned her (very nice) house in north London and kept on driving until she reached the Norfolk coast. Now she's rented a tiny cottage and holed herself away there, if only to escape the ceaseless sympathy and insincere concern.

She's not quite sure, but thinks she may be having a bit of a breakdown. Or perhaps this sense of dislocation is perfectly normal in the circumstances. All she knows is that she can't sleep and may be drinking a little more than she ought to.

But as her story unfolds we discover that her marriage was far from perfect. That it was, in fact, full of frustration and disappointment, as well as one or two significant secrets, and that by running away to this particular village she might actually be making her own personal pilgrimage.

By turns elegiac and highly comical, The Widow's Tale conjures up this most defiantly unapologetic of narrators as she begins to pick over the wreckage of her life and decide what has real value and what she should leave behind.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• When I ran out of the house
• Christ but it’s cold. I spent half an hour
• I walked over to Cley this morning
• The young slip of a policewoman who
• Woke up last night about four o’clock
• This morning I just about managed
• Those first couple of years we used
• Today, it seems, is laundry day
• I once went on a retreat, when I was in
• This place is so God-damned cold
• Losing one’s husband really is a complete bummer 
• One of the surprises, re the sudden onset 
• A couple of months ago I did a bit of cursory Googling
• I’ve decided to sell the house in France
• The wind is up. It’s got all the dogs 
• It’s like an ache. Or a sort of emptiness 
• Sometime in late November, about six weeks
• Not a good day, by any means 
• I seem incapable of stringing two decent
• I really can’t imagine anything worse than
• I’ve come up with a new way of eating
• Ginny’s texts and messages have 
• I have bought myself a new car! 
• I bought a couple of the Sunday newspapers
• A couple of days ago I was driving
• If it had been John that had had an affair
• Even now, I’m at a loss as to why I
• It seems that north Norfolk is in the grip of an
• I never told a soul. Not even Ginny
• Popped into the letting agents this
• I have this idea sometimes that John
• I’ve never had that many friends. 
• By the time we got back from 
• Spent most of this morning 
• It’s an odd sort of word. Widow 
• I didn’t set out to pay a visit to Walsingham 
• I’m like a bloody sentry 
• My first thought was that I was being mugged 
• I am, there’s no use me denying it 
• Talking of saints
• I’m not entirely sure what I was
• Right up until the day I jumped into my car 
• I couldn’t now say for certain 
• I’ve still not got much of an appetite 
• You hear about these couples 
• There’s a terrific film called The Awful Truth
• I’m rather taken with my new binoculars
• I remember going to Rome sometime in the 1970s 
• My daily walks have gradually been 
• If you’re not careful 
• I was in the pub the other night 
• I just want to see him. 
• Things seem to have fallen 
• I very nearly buggered things up this morning 
• I’ve gone too far
• I’ve had enough 
• I haven’t left the village 
• Not that long after I first arrived 
• About a week after John died 
• I’ve been at it again. 
• I’m considering buying a map of Britain 
• Apparently, I just pull the door 
• About the Author
• By the Same Author
• Copyright