All that is Fragile is an immersive tale that investigates questions of family loyalty, the nature of cults and the role of the arts and critical thinking.
Kate is a forty-one year old Tate curator who has built a life in constant motion, keeping loneliness at bay through sheer momentum. When her son leaves for his gap year, the house falls quiet, and the independence she has always prized starts to feel like something closer to abandonment. A traumatic event sends her tightly managed world spinning, and an unexpected retreat to a remote Scottish island opens up space she has never allowed herself: for refuge, for reckoning, for love.
For readers of The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller and Elizabeth Strout's The Things We Never Say, All That Is Fragile is an immersive novel of self-discovery and, at its heart, a love story. Spanning Scotland, London, Berlin, Kerala and Riyadh, and set against two seismic world events, it interlaces Kate's inner unravelling with the pressures of the wider world — power and bias in the art market, the reach of cancel culture, and the global politics of the Middle East.
All That Is Fragile asks what remains when the things we rely on to hold ourselves together — status, routine, other people's certainty — fall away, and what, if anything, is left standing.
Taking the reader on a journey from the dying embers of Edwardian England, through the trauma of two world wars, the hedonism of London in the 1980s and 'Cool Britannia' in the 1990s right up to the present day, One Hundred Summers is a portrait of a century as it was experienced by one extraordinary family. .
Along the way, Vanessa Branson recalls the rough and tumble of her chaotic but happy post-war childhood; growing up alongside her older brother Richard, who was entrepreneurial even as a teenager, she would have a front-row seat at the birth of Virgin, one of the most remarkable success stories in British business. She goes on to share her many adventures in a fascinating life, from opening an art gallery on London's Portobello Road and founding an arts festival in Morocco, to turning an ancient palace into a world-famous hotel and finding a real-life Neverland in the Scottish island of Eilean Shona, where J. M. Barrie once wrote a screenplay for Peter Pan.
Touching, humane and at times heartbreakingly honest, Branson's family memoir is a vivid and charming tapestry of English eccentricity, fortune, fate and passion.
One Hundred Summers is also available in print or audio from Bloomsbury, Waterstones, and Bolinda.
“An intergenerational memoir that weaves together a vivid tapestry of English eccentrics, heroes, lovers and villains.” — Naddim Samman
“The message is positive and bright, in a dark time: it's the perfect antidote to Coronavirus, as well as being, en passant a strange kind of elegy to that baby-boomer bonanza we know so well. It's a great read.” — Robert McCrum
“It’s a delightful read. People seldom write with such warmth of their families, or their past, and One Hundred Summers brings a sort of loving glow to it all. I liked the sense of curiosity that her folk express about things - wanting to explore, wishing to know.” — Andrew O’Hagan
“Where Gerald Durrell meets Nora Ephron.” — Howell James OBE
“I loved this book… the electric energy driving it, never mind the electric energy of the ravishing heroine of the book… and admiration of how much she has done.” — Polly Devlin
“A very British family with all their foibles and eccentricities, flaws and triumphs joining in a complete picture of a modern woman with a big heart and an unstoppable energy.“ — Raffaela Barker
“Charming, honest, beautifully written, lyrical, this is a wonderful family memoir - the real Swallows & Amazons. — Kate Mosse
“One Hundred Summers is funny and generous in its spirit and refreshingly, bracingly honest. It describes a life well and fully lived, littered with touching portraits: of Branson’s parents, of her marriage, of her children, of her famous brother, and of her career. It is written with great verve, a sense of humor, and a certain endearing lightness of touch, and will reward and entrance any reader.” — Andrew Solomon
