A City Reads

Sarah Perry, this year’s City Reads author, explores grief for the millennial generation in her debut novel, as Simone Hellyer discovers

- Simone Hellyer

A novel about grief that is set in Brighton has been chosen for this year’s City Reads’ Big Read event.

Sarah Perry’s debut novel Let Me Be Like Water follows songwriter Holly as she impulsively escapes from London to Brighton after her boyfriend Sam dies. The novel details Brighton’s nooks and crannies in so much intimate detail that you would assume it was written by a native. In fact, Sarah lives in Leeds, but her love of Brighton has been a lifelong affair, as she explains: “My family are from the very edge of Croydon and when my mum was a kid she would go on day trips to Brighton with her parents. They would walk along the prom and get an ice cream from Marrocco’s, so when we were children she would do the same with us. I also spent the first day of the new millennium in Brighton swimming in the sea.”

Sarah found out that her book had been chosen while she was in the car on the way to her wedding last year and says she is looking forward to coming back to Brighton in May for an in conversation-style event. “The city is a really important part of the novel and is almost like one of the characters. So, it feels really exciting to be able to come and spend some time letting the book live there a bit for the City Reads event,” Sarah says.