A sparkling comedy of rural life, high and low

'Very, very funny' Independent

'I loved it. I couldn't put it down ... Raffaella Barker is so good at drawing her characters and making them likeable that within about ten pages you know them intimately and a few pages later you are almost as concerned about them as you are your real friends ... Very, very well done' Daily Express

After one year of being ‘buffered from single-motherhood’ by her boyfriend, David, Venetia Summers suddenly finds her life unravelling as he is sent to the Brazilian jungle and she is left alone in Norfolk.

As chaos reigns in her home and her three children run wilder than ever she finds her life further complicated by a bad-mouthed green parrot, a burgeoning fashion career designing demented cardigans and her brother’s outrageous wedding.

As emails languish unanswered, phone lines cut out and long-distance relationships prove both vexing and bewildering, life and love take some very unexpected turns.

Very, very funny * Independent *
I loved it. I couldn't put it down ... Raffaella Barker is so good at drawing her characters and making them likeable that within about ten pages you know them intimately and a few pages later you are almost as concerned about them as you are your real friends ... Very, very well done * Daily Express *
My advice is not to read Summertime in public. You'll giggle, you'll snort, you'll make an exhibition of yourself ... I loved Hens Dancing, and this is better yet * Country Life *
The comic voices are virtuoso ... Summertime is a mood-altering book: as light and bright and optimistic as the days it celebrates * Independent *

Raffaella Barker, daughter of the poet George Barker, was born and brought up in the Norfolk countryside. She is the author of seven acclaimed novels: Come and Tell Me Some Lies, The Hook, Hens Dancing, Summertime, Green Grass, A Perfect Life and Poppyland. She has also written a novel for young adults, Phosphorescence. She is a regular contributor to the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph, and teaches on the Literature and Creative Writing BA at the University of East Anglia and the Guardian UEA Novel Writing Masterclass. Raffaella Barker lives by the sea in north Norfolk. www.raffaellabarker.co.uk @raffaellabarker