ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – A Short Road to Longbrook by Bethan Roberts

Posted on 1st April 2026 By Nicola

A Short Road to Longbrook by Bethan Roberts is published by Chatto & Windus and is out now. My thanks to the publishers for the proof copy.

I’ve read several of this author’s previous books, all pre-blog, and I really do enjoy her writing.

A tender story of mothers, daughters and breaking family patterns

When Winnie is happy, Lillian is happy, too.

It’s the mid-1960s and Lillian Wells is a clever teenager with a daring pixie cut, tangerine mini-dress and new boyfriend, Jim, who works at the brewery. Even better, he lives across the road, so she’s never far from her bee-hived, high-heeled single mother Winnie, who is prone to attacks of the nerves. But Lillian harbours secret dreams of going to art school in London. When she gets in, how will she tell her mother – and Jim – that she’s leaving Abingdon – and them?

Forty years later, Lillian’s own daughter Rachel is heading off to university, but Lillian is not sure either of them are ready. She sees herself and Winnie in Rachel, who is ambitious and intelligent, but also prone to nervous habits. As Lillian tries to bite her tongue about Rachel’s symptoms, she is reminded of what everyone in Abingdon used to say: It’s a short road to Longbrook… the local institution for the mentally ill. Lillian knows this is all too true, but in a family where secrets run through generations like the rushing waters of the local river, can she bring herself to break the cycle and tell Rachel the truth about her past?

Lillian is a teenager in the 1960s and seems to have the world at her feet. She lives with her mother, Winnie, at 25 Mason Road, is happy studying and thinking ahead to possibly fulfilling her dreams of going to art school, and she has a new boyfriend Jim, who she enjoys going dancing with. There’s always the perpetual issue of Winnie’s nerves lurking in the background though, and the question of Lillian’s father. Lillian’s story forms the majority of the book but there are also sections in 2005 as Rachel, Lillian’s daughter, prepares to go to university. Lillian sees many of the same traits in Rachel as she and her own mother had and she worries for Rachel’s future.

Lillian grew up hearing ‘it’s a short road to Longbrook’ the fear and stigma of being incarcerated in the local hospital for the mentally ill never far from the minds of the locals. Indeed, Longbrook casts a long shadow over the characters of this book, at a time when mental health problems were something to be whispered about and kept secret.

Within a few pages of starting this wonderful book I had already grown wistful at the memory of the ‘club book’ (the catalogue where Winnie gets her striking red curtains) and had smiled at the observations of life that seemed somehow so familiar and real. I knew then that I was going to love this book and I really did adore every moment of it. It examines the complicated relationships that are passed down from Winnie to Lillian, and then to Rachel, a pattern that Lillian wants to see broken for the sake of her daughter.

Beautifully written with incredibly perceptive insights into the minds of the complex characters, A Short Road to Longbrook is a captivating novel which deserves to be read and talked about. I couldn’t have loved it more.

Bethan Roberts has published five novels and writes stories and drama for BBC Radio 4. Her books include The Good Plain Cook, which was a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime; My Policeman, the story of a 1950s policeman, his wife, and his male lover (now a major Amazon Original movie starring Harry Styles and Emma Corrin); Mother Island, which received a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize; and Graceland, which tells the story of Elvis Presley and his mother, Gladys. She also writes short fiction, for which she has won the Society of Authors’ Olive Cook Prize and the RA Pin Drop Award. Bethan has taught Creative Writing at Chichester University and Goldsmiths College, London. She lives in Brighton with her family.