Jarred McGinnis

There is no meant to be but the love I’ve known has made it hard to believe thatAn inventive, funny and deeply moving family epic: a love story, an elegy and a reminder that even in the mess of family and memory there is something to laugh aboutAN OBSERVER NON-FICTION BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026'A wild ride' JON McGREGOR'Raw and intimate, so daring and disobedient’ SARAH HALL'The most beautiful and truthful song to the pain present in a good life' EVIE WYLDJarred McGinnis was born to a Southern US clan where masculinity, resilience and physical violence were intertwined. In There Is No Meant to Be he unearths the legends, secrets and scars that have shaped his family line from his outlaw Irish ancestors to his mother Momo’s gift of foresight, and the ghosts – both real and remembered – that follow him into adulthood. Two decades on from the near-fatal accident that left him in a wheelchair, McGinnis is married and the father of two girls, living first in East London and now Marseille. He writes about love within the context of care and of the particular vulnerability that comes from being a parent with a disability. In a daring imaginative leap, he writes of the end of life too, reaching beyond his own death to look at what truly makes a life. 'Caustic, hilarious, unflinchingly honest and so captivatingly humane, I couldn't put this book down' JAN CARSON'In a world teetering on madness, here is an ode to truth, courage, and the beautiful power of vulnerability' ELAINE FEENEY'A multi-layered, many-textured masterpiece' CHARLIE GILMOUR

A BBC TWO BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK After a car accident Jarred discovers he'll never walk again. Confined to a 'giant roller-skate', he finds himself with neither money nor job, a shoplifting habit, an addiction to painkillers and strangers treating him like he's an idiot. Worse still, he's forced to live back home with his estranged father. Trying to piece himself together, Jarred comes to realise that things don't have to stay broken after all. The Coward is about hurt and forgiveness, how the world treats disabled people, and how we write and rewrite the stories we tell ourselves about our lives - and try to find a happy ending.

Question: What's worse than being in a wheelchair? Answer: Being a fuck-up in a wheelchair. After a car accident Jarred discovers he'll never walk again. Confined to a 'giant roller-skate', he finds himself with neither money nor job. Worse still, he's forced to live back home with the father he hasn't spoken to in ten years. Add in a shoplifting habit, an addiction to painkillers and the fact that total strangers now treat him like he's an idiot, it's a recipe for self-destruction. How can he stop himself careering out of control? As he tries to piece his life together again, he looks back over his past - the tragedy that blasted his family apart, why he ran away, the damage he's caused himself and others - and starts to wonder whether, maybe, things don't always have to stay broken after all. The Coward is about hurt and forgiveness. It's about how the world treats disabled people. And it's about how we write and rewrite the stories we tell ourselves about our lives - and try to find a happy ending.