"This beautifully-written, beautifully-balanced novel explores grief, anxiety and love through the heart-rending, poignantly funny lens of an actress who’s trapped by life-shattering loss. "
Tender and ingeniously funny (the comic timing is exquisite), Outside confirms Charlotte Levin’s extraordinary gift for observation and nuances of character that cut to the core of contemporary life and the human condition.
Following the sudden tragic death of her French mother, a famous former model, up-and-coming actress Beatrice has shut herself off from the world. Shackled by grief and anxiety, she’s confined her existence to her mother’s house. Communication is all but limited to her talking parakeet (“Wanker” is the bird’s most frequent utterance), the postman, the longstanding elderly Polish tenant of her mother’s downstairs flat, and her therapist.
Then, almost by accident, Beatrice hires an Irish gardener to work on her mother’s overgrown garden. When Beatrice reveals she can’t leave the house, warm, gentle, funny Finn is understanding. “When the apple’s ripe, it’ll fall”, he says, which becomes a potent symbol of Beatrice’s faltering journey to finding freedom from grief and anxiety.
In time, while Beatrice and Finn’s bond blooms into a connection that feels “as natural as the grass and flowers and earth”, this is no simplistic happy-ever-after love story. Rather, Outside is achingly true-to-life: devastating, messy, tender and hysterically funny as it conjures intimate emotional truths while glinting with the promise of release and renewal. As such, Outside is sure to be relished by fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Sorrow and Bliss, The Rosie Project, and Fredrik Backman’s feel-good fiction.
| Primary Genre | Literary Fiction |
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Win a Book, Seed Packets and an Art Print T-Shirt with Charlotte Levin's Outside
Closing date: 31/08/2026
Following a tragic incident, rising-star Beatrice is struggling. Having retreated from life entirely, she finds herself unable to leave the house. With her acting career now over, (Though don't tell her agent), and discovering who her real friends aren't, her world has shrunk-its only inhabitants, an elderly Polish neighbour, the world's most boring postman, her therapist with issues of her own, and Piano Bitch from across the road. Thank God for Matisse, her beloved, foul-mouthed parakeet.
When she hires Irish gardener, Finn, to tame the overgrown garden that she cannot even enter, things take an unexpected turn. Their connection blossoms, and she's no longer isolated and alone. But can a relationship survive the restrictions that control her, or will love enable Beatrice to confront her fears and step outside again?
Your next reading obsession, the poignant and darkly funny new novel from the bestselling author of If I Can't Have You, perfect for fans of Sorrow and Bliss and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.
Outside features in the following genres: Star Books, General Fiction, Literary Fiction, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Fiction
Outside is available in Hardback, Paperback, Ebook
Outside was written by Charlotte Levin and published by Magpie an imprint of Oneworld Publications
Outside has 384 pages
£15.29
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