The new novel from Richard Francis, the acclaimed author of Taking Apart the Poco Poco, is a bittersweet portrait of the Willis family, who live in a small terraced house in 1940s Stockport. Fat Hen is a novel about the inner and outer lives we create for ourselves and how they impinge on each other, sometimes even without our realising it. It's Stockport, 1948, and an ordinary family, Rose and Jack Willis, their son Donald, and Rose's father...