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Claire Daverley
Claire Daverley is a British author recognized for her debut novel, "Talking at Night." Her writing explores relationships and personal connections. She lives in London.
Talking at Night
Will White and Rosie Winters meet as teenagers on opposite paths — he's written off as trouble, she's exhausted from trying to be perfect for a mother who expects nothing less. A single late-night conversation at a bonfire changes everything between them. Then a tragedy at a party the following year shatters their small world, pulling Will and Rosie apart even as grief binds them together.
Over the next fifteen years, their lives run parallel and collide: relationships start and end, careers take shape, and Rosie's unraveling mental health resurfaces in ways she can't always name. Through it all, when neither can sleep, they call each other — sometimes as friends, sometimes as something neither will admit to wanting. Talking at Night follows two people who keep almost choosing each other, tracing how a single formative loss can shape a decade of near-misses before either is ready to stop running from what they feel.
Bright but branded the school's bad seed, carrying early trauma and a drinking problem.
A perfectionist and people-pleaser under pressure from her mother's high expectations.