Three acclaimed authors tackle the the pain, awkwardness and strange joy of growing up. Esther Freud has frequently returned to this theme in her novels. Sidura Ludwig’s debut novel, Holding My Breath depicts a young woman’s struggle to find her way in the world. The Rowing Lesson, set in South Africa, is a moving story of a daughter’s wish to keep her father alive by retelling his life story.

The characters in Jon Canter, Lana Citron and Rudolph Delson’s novels seem to be mostly bewildered at life, often angry. They meet romance by accident as they certainly can’t believe in it being either misanthropic or disillusioned. The results are hilarious. They’ve been compared to Woody Allen, Nora Ephron and Tony Parson.

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Jewish Book Week presented two witty novels of marriage in the suburbs: in London’s Hampstead Garden Suburb, childhood sweethearts Adam and Rachel are set for a life of domestic bliss. In Chicago, Edie, matriarch of the Middlesteins, is eating herself to death and her family can’t stop her. Francesca Segal discussed The Innocents with Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins. Positioned respectively at the start and end of a marriage, both these books look fondly at Jewish habits...

Biographer and journalist Chloe Schama dedicated her first book, Wild Romance, to her father “who taught me how to tell a story.” Simon and Chloe engage in an intimate and lively conversation about family bonds, parental expectations, intergenerational values and the nature of creativity. Their interviewer is writer Francesca Segal, daughter of Erich Segal.

This event has live subtitles by Stagetext

Fractured and fractious families are at the heart of two witty contemporary morality tales. Amanda Craig’s The Lie of the Land traces the trajectory of the sexually unquenchable Quentin and his unhappy partner, Lottie, whose problems only escalate when they decamp to Devon’s remote arcadia. Francesca Segal’s razor-sharp, The Awkward Age, tells of the fallout when two families merge in North London and civil war ensues.

Set in an upper-middle-class Tel Aviv apartment building, prize-winning author Eshkol Nevo’s brilliant recent novel, translated by Sondra Silverstein, presents a complex and emotionally wrought society, through revealing the turmoil, secrets, unreliable confessions and problematic decisions of the building’s interconnected residents.

Hadley Freeman hosted a Saturday night Valentine’s Special at JW3 based on her latest book, Life Moves Pretty Fast, explaining why the 1980s was a truly dazzling decade in cinema history. In conversation with award-winning author Francesca Segal she also explored why, in her opinion, no period since has produced such an influential stream of movies.