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A Real Piece of Work
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A Real Piece of Work

By: Freya Bromley
Narrated by: Ellie Kendrick
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Summary

THE NERO BOOK AWARD SHORTLISTED AUTHOR

What does it mean for a stranger to think you’re brave? Readers called me ‘raw’ because I wrote about crying into takeaway containers and drunk texting my dead sister’s number. People wanted to believe it was fearless of me to broadcast my breakdown, but the truth was that I’d curated that messiness until it was just the right kind of chaos.

Nola McConkey has made it. Animal Oracle, the memoir she has written about her beloved late sister Darina, has become a hit. People read it, critics loved it, producers now want to make it into a movie. The dream of quitting her job and becoming a full-time writer in London doesn’t seem so far away. There’s only one problem: everyone in her family has an opinion about the book – and none of them are good. Though Nola can’t let it affect her. It’s the price she must pay for the life she wants.

But now, someone has made an anonymous complaint to her publisher about Animal Oracle. Suddenly, her hard-won reputation as a literary darling is at stake. Nola is sure that only someone in her secretive, chaotic family could be to blame. As her parents and three remaining siblings prepare to spend the fifth anniversary of Darina’s death together on the isolated island of Lundy, Nola knows this is the perfect opportunity to convince her accuser to pull the complaint before it causes irreparable damage – but first, she must discover who made it.

A Real Piece of Work is a sparkling and spiky story of complicated families and even more complicated sisters, exploring who owns grief and who gets to tell the story of those who are gone and those left behind with tenderness, nuance and wit.

'Sharp, tender, and bracingly honest about who owns a narrative, and what it costs to claim it' OISÍN MCKENNA

'Has all the hallmarks of my favourite kind of novel: introspective, funny, philosophical, and bringing the outside world in' EMMA GANNON

'A tender and intricate novel . . . It’s like looking at a family portrait through the shards of a broken frame' WILLIAM RAYFET HUNTER

'This is such a timely novel about the versions of history we tell inside and outside of a family, who gets to write that down and how grief shapes us. Sharply observed, and deeply human.' JENNIE GODFREY

'A heartfelt, nuanced debut novel which balances the tension of opposites . . . a sparkling ode to sisterhood and finding the sublime in the everyday' SHARLENE TEO

© Freya Bromley 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

 Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction
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Critic Reviews

A Real Piece of Work has all the hallmarks of my favourite kind of novel: introspective, funny, philosophical, and bringing the outside world in. I love Freya Bromley’s writing and her gift for capturing emotions and ideas that so often feel impossible to pin down (Emma Gannon)
A tender and intricate novel. Bromley writes grief with unflinching clarity, charting its quiet tremors through family life. It’s like looking at a family portrait through the shards of a broken frame (William Rayfet Hunter)
A Real Piece of Work is a kaleidoscopic look at all the different shapes of love and longing. Bromley astutely observes the way grief can shape desires: for a relationship, for a career, for a fresh start. A strong debut voice promising wit and wisdom (Sarvat Hasin)
The isolated island [of Lundy] is the perfect setting for a performance in moral inquiry. (Jade Angeles Fitton)
A heartfelt, nuanced debut novel which adroitly balances the tension of opposites: both mordantly funny and radiantly joyful, snarky and earnestly tender – how does a complex family keep going after grief? What are the boundaries between art and lies, being a bystander or an active participant in your own life? I so admired and enjoyed how this novel doesn't shy away from unlikeable feelings or thorny question, it has the texture of real life and the universality of good fiction. A REAL PIECE OF WORK candidly interrogates these big questions and is also a sparkling ode to London, sisterhood and finding the sublime in the everyday. (Sharlene Teo)
No one else captures the nuances and undercurrents of grief like this. A Real Piece of Work is funny and wise while its honesty about human nature smacks like a shock of cold water. Above all, I was impressed by its profound questioning about who gets to tell our stories, who has the right to tell them and, ultimately, how we reconcile these competing versions of truth with those we love. (Michael Amherst, author of THE BOYHOOD OF CAIN)
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