The novel alternates between chapters that follow what happens to Byron, his mother and their family (which the reader quickly realizes is more dysfunctional than Byron does) and ones that concern an adult sufferer of obsessive-compulsive disorder who resorts to menial labor when the British mental health system fails him. A veteran of the stage and a radio playwright before turning to fiction, Joyce specializes in the sort of insights that some find charming, others cloying and a style that could sometimes pass for fairy tale, other times for Young Adult (though those readers wouldn’t have much patience for her plotting). And whether or not something happens, everything changes.

It’s the difference between something happening and something not happening.” And with the addition of those two seconds-or not-something happens-or not. Two seconds are nothing,” Byron responds, “That’s what nobody realizes. After his mother assures him that “hen it happens you won’t notice. The protagonist is 11-year-old Byron, a reflective and innocent schoolboy who becomes overly concerned when his best friend, James, tells him that two seconds will be added to this leap year to somehow even things out. and her native Britain with The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2012), Joyce returns with an even less likely but more ambitious piece of fictional fancy. Having earned a best-selling readership in both the U.S. She lives with her family near Stroud.The time is out of joint, as the follow-up to a popular novelistic debut brings a slightly darker edge to its fablelike whimsy. Rachel has also written over twenty original afternoon plays and adaptations of the classics for BBC Radio 4, including all the Bronte novels.

Rachel was awarded the Specsavers National Book Awards ‘New Writer of the Year’ in December 2012 and shortlisted for the ‘UK Author of the Year’ 2014.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book prize and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Two are currently in development for film. Her books have sold over 5 million copies worldwide, and been translated into thirty-six languages. Rachel Joyce is the author of the Sunday Times and international bestsellers The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Perfect, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, The Music Shop, and the New York Times bestseller Miss Benson's Beetle, as well as a collection of interlinked short stories, A Snow Garden & Other Stories.

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