Siân Hughes's 'No Such Thing as Monday' Opens a Family's Silences

"No Such Thing as Monday," the forthcoming novel from Siân Hughes, opens with a woman finding a sister she has never visited. Stephanie Jane Cartwright needs only a few bus rides and no passport. She has simply never tried.

Henry Holt and Co. will publish the book, copyright 2026, and has released an excerpt used with permission. It is narrated by Stephanie, a caregiver at an old people's home with a prison record behind her, who is arranging her father's funeral and deciding whether to contact Caroline, the sister erased from the household's official story.

What does the excerpt reveal about the family?

The documentary spine is precise. Birth certificates found in Stanley Cartwright's drawers record Caroline Marie, born May 1965, and Stephanie Jane, born October 1966, both registered by their father. Their mother had been widowed in 1960 when her first husband died in a workplace accident; the insurance payout kept the house. The arithmetic makes nonsense of the father's claim that Caroline came from that first marriage. The children learned not to argue.

Hughes renders that learning in the image that gives the book its title. "You have to have Tuesday twice in your head every week to catch up," Stephanie says. "We skipped over a lot of things in our house."

Stanley Cartwright left no will and nothing to leave. He borrowed against his pension for dogs, fighting birds and bets. Stephanie pays for the funeral, and the family dog's destruction costs £138 plus VAT. She visits the undertakers, Morris and Baines, with fresh clothes, refuses to view the body, and cannot stop wondering whether coins placed on his eyes would survive the furnace.

What does the narrator remember?

The excerpt's structure moves between the present death and two childhood registers. In one, Stanley feeds Stephanie corned beef sandwiches, toast and dripping, and cocoa at midnight, emptying the cupboards so nothing remains for the others. In the other, he watches his wife slice the top from a boiled egg. "Eat your tea, Steffie. All of it. Like a good girl. I like a nice clean plate." Stephanie realizes only years later that her mother may have been saving that slice for her sister.

The book's darkest passage belongs to the chicken coops, where Stanley explains his method with fighting birds: "You have to sow the seeds of hatred in their hearts." He paints a white streak on a tail so the flock mobs one animal, then removes it after a day or two. The metaphor for the household is unforced and complete.

At Nanny Marie's funeral, the sisters' last meeting before the father's death, Caroline stands in pointy heels sinking into the mud. "Yeah," she says of her closeness to the grandmother. "Well, I'd have starved to death without her." The line launches Stephanie's quiet investigation into who was fed, who was excluded and who paid the ferryman.

Hughes, whose earlier work earned wide critical attention, closes the excerpt with Stephanie now able to hear a neighbor say "Your sister called" without her stomach turning. The novel's publication will tell readers whether the word "sister," as Stephanie puts it, can live forever in her belly without doing harm.