Bernice Rubens explores what happens to a respectable, close-knit Jewish family when the apple of his parents’ eyes becomes a middle-aged drug addict
A Five-Year Sentence
Written by Bernice Rubens
- Shortlisted
- The Booker Prize 1978
- Published by W.H. Allen
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Bernice Rubens’ intriguing novel about a factory worker who is forced to change her drastic retirement plan when she receives a diary as a gift
Rubens pulls no punches with her dramatic opening: ‘Miss Hawkins looked at her watch. It was 2.30. If everything went to plan, she would be dead by six o’clock.’ But things don’t go to plan. A five-year diary, which she receives as a retirement gift, compels the dutiful Miss Hawkins to cancel her carefully prepared suicide. Having been sentenced to live, she then embarks on a mission to taste life’s secret pleasures.
Bernice Rubens
Bernice Rubens became the first woman (and to date the only Welsh novelist) to win the Booker Prize when she triumphed in its second year, 1970, with The Elected Member
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