In Sian Hughes' second novel «No Such Thing as Monday», the focus is on a woman who has lived for decades with a family silence. Steffie Cartwright was sixteen when her older sister Caroline disappeared. The family never spoke about it, and Steffie kept to this unspoken rule. Hughes tells her story as a mix of family tragedy, guilt and a sober, bitter look at what follows.
The family was unequally divided from the start. Father Stan treated the two daughters very differently, and the gentle mother, who might have balanced things out, has since died. Steffie now cares for her father and works at a dry cleaner's. The father hoards eggs and throws the rest into a hedge, a detail that describes the state of the household as much as the attitude of the man who runs it. Steffie thus lives in a daily routine shaped by duty, control and unspoken hurts.
The turning point comes with the father's funeral. Steffie borrows clothing belonging to a customer for the occasion, and when this comes to light she is dismissed. When her boss confronts her, she hits him. According to the source material, the loss of her job ushers in a phase of drugs, alcohol, eviction and crime. Over these years, Steffie is increasingly preoccupied with the question of whether to search for Caroline and tell her about the father's death. The novel makes clear that the missing sister remains for Steffie not only a family wound but also an open decision.
Hughes deliberately places laundry and clothing at the centre. In an author's note she refers to a 14th-century poem, «Purity» or «Cleanness», in which dirty clothing serves as a metaphor for a person's spiritual state. This connection between purity, dirt and guilt runs through the novel and gives the character's everyday life additional depth. That a laundry worker should stand at the centre gives the motif a concrete, craft-based dimension: Steffie is constantly occupied with cleaning, mending and returning other people's clothes, while her own life becomes ever harder to put in order.
The narrative voice is sarcastic but not self-pitying. Critics describe Steffie as self-destructive and violent, yet also compelling. It is precisely this ambivalence that keeps the reader at a distance and yet close to the character. The final chapter is also described as surprising, because it casts the preceding events in a new light and clarifies what happened before. The novel thus remains a dark, unsparing study of family, responsibility and the silence that holds people together for years while also destroying them.