Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Carole Cadwalladr Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Carole Cadwalladr

Carole Cadwalladr

How to pronounce Carole Cadwalladr: CAD-wall-uh-der

Carole Cadwalladr Biography

Carole Cadwalladr is a British author. Her first novel, The Family Tree, was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Author's Club First Novel Award, theWaverton Good Read Award, and the Wales Book of the Year. It was also a Daily Mail Book Club pick and was dramatised as a five-part serial on BBC Radio 4.

She used to be a journalist and travel writer for The Daily Telegraph and is now a features writer and columnist on The Observer. She has twice been shortlisted in the British Press Awards.

Carole Cadwalladr's website

This bio was last updated on 10/22/2014. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Interview

Cadwalladr discusses many aspects of her first novel, The Family Tree, in this very interesting interview.

This book successfully employs an unusual and complicated structure while balancing multiple storylines. How did you decide on this particular mode of conveying the lives of the Monroes? How easy or difficult was it to maintain the structure as you wrote the book?

I wish I could say that I had some grand design for the novel, but I'd be lying. And the structure, the multiple plot lines, was something that evolved along the way. I started out with two plots – the 1970s one and the 1940s one. A few months in, I realized that they weren't hanging together but instead of axing one of them (which would have been by far the most sensible option), I ended up writing a third – set in the present day. Juggling these was like undertaking a huge never-ending jigsaw puzzle. As soon as I shifted around one segment, it impacted on all the others….and I spent months cutting and pasting chapters, striking them out, jigging them around, cursing myself for making life so complicated. A year or so into it, I developed intense pangs of jealousy for "simple stories well told" sorts of books: one timeline, one narrator, one perspective. But, at the end of the day, families and family histories are ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Carole Cadwalladr at BookBrowse
The Family Tree jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Carole Cadwalladr but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Kate Atkinson

    Kate Atkinson

    Kate Atkinson won the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her four bestselling novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie became the BBC television series ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Family Tree

    Try:
    When Will There Be Good News?
    by Kate Atkinson

  • Jonathan Franzen

    Jonathan Franzen

    Jonathan Franzen is the author of five novels, including The Corrections, Freedom, and Purity, and five works of nonfiction, most recently Farther Away and The End of the End of the Earth, all published by Farrar, Straus and ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Family Tree

    Try:
    The Corrections
    by Jonathan Franzen

We recommend 6 similar authors

View all 6 Read-Alikes

Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...
  • Book Jacket
    The Rest of You
    by Maame Blue
    At the start of Maame Blue's The Rest of You, Whitney Appiah, a Ghanaian Londoner, is ringing in her...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.