No Such Thing as Monday
A Novel

Quotes

Praise for No Such Thing as Monday

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Literary Hub and Harper's Bazaar

“Steffie’s sardonic, never self-pitying voice is impossible not to fall for. . . . With an alchemy like Douglas Stuart’s, Hughes transforms the dross of Steffie’s life into literary gold.”
—Kirkus (starred review)

“Hughes . . . will take you from heartbreak to laughter and back again in her story of self-sabotaging Steffie. . . .Raw and darkly funny. It's a triumph.”
—The Sunday Post

“Funny, forlorn and audacious.”
—The Times (London)

“Steffie is a master of deadpan humor. . . . [Hughes] offers a tender portrayal of Steffie's complexities. . . . As it examines the long-term effects of growing up in a divided household where love and hate so easily coexist, No Such Thing as Monday celebrates its heroine's complicated road to redemption even as she accepts that some memories, like old stains, don't ever disappear.”
—Shelf Awareness

“Hughes is peerless in her ability to render the real textures, indignities and small joys of contemporary British working-class life.”
—The Bee Magazine

“One of the most unforgettable voices you will read this year narrates No Such Thing as Monday. Raw, honest, unflinching and shot through with dark humour, the voice belongs to Steffie, a 50-something, working-class woman from the West Midlands. She is down, but not yet out, when her bullying father’s sudden death cracks her life open.”
—The Bookseller (UK)

“The gritty realism of this novel reminded me of Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain. Despite being a short book, it says so much and really packs in the emotional punches.”
—Red Magazine, Books to Read in April

“A stunningly frank and darkly funny novel of loneliness and resilience. I loved it.”
—Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry

“I was blindsided by the brilliance of this novel.”
—Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and Bliss and Sophie, Standing There

“No Such Thing As Monday is by turns gritty and affectionate, dark and memorably funny. Steffie, the novel’s blunt, scarred narrator, pulls you into her world with one of the most engaging and original voices I’ve read in years. Her spiky humor, determination, and lack of self-pity make her search for connection gripping and deeply moving. This novel is a short, powerful triumph.”
—Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life and The Object of My Affection

“Richly absorbing and powerful—a ‘read to the small hours’ novel. Steffie has a unique voice that keeps you glued to her story, and that I absolutely loved.”
—Kate Hamer, author of The Girl in the Red Coat

“Delicious, and it hit my heart like a hammerblow.”
—Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Praise for Pearl

“An exceptional debut novel….The degree of difficulty in writing a book of this sort—at once quiet and hugely ambitious—is very high. It’s a book that will be passed from hand to hand for a long time to come.”
—Booker Prize committee

“A masterful novel, shot through with legend and song. It can be read on many levels: as a mystery, as a story of grief and healing, as a response to a poem. But most of all, it can be read as a story of love.”
—The Boston Globe

“Compulsive and wonderfully written, Pearl is a small gem.”
—The Times Literary Supplement

“Hughes’s novel, which is wonderful on the detail of a late 20th-century rural English childhood and at its best recalls Edna O’Brien’s masterful A Pagan Place, is radical in largely dispensing with dramatic tension in order to create a circling story that maps the lasting impact of a loss.….The way trauma cuts one off from the world and isolates the sufferer in the moment that hurt them is brilliantly rendered here.”
—The Guardian

“Pearl is a novel that has wisdom and experience distilled into it, that defies its downbeat subject matter with the joy of its telling.”
—The Times (London)

“[A] stunning debut.”
—Sunday Post

“A quietly beautiful novel, full of grief and English poetry...A rare gem that fully deserves its Booker longlisting, and your attention.”
—The Telegraph