Catch the Moments As They Fly

by Zoë Strachan

Publication date: 21st of September 2023

Rena Jarvie is ahead of her time. Ambitious, attractive, and determined her family will escape their shameful past. A new town offers a chance at the respectability and independence she craves, but is it enough? When she marries Bobby Young – charming, cosmopolitan and haunted by his own memories – doors begin to open for the couple. Together, they could make their mark on the world – or lose everything they have. Spanning the 1930s to the 1960s, Catch the Moments as They Fly is a vividly realised portrait of class, ambition and womanhood in a rapidly changing Scotland. Told in Strachan’s subtle and delicate prose, it is a radiant work of fiction.

Read the review on SNACK magazine

Glasgow and Kilmarnock are much more than mere backdrops to the delicate web of
human voices and fates in the novel: their own civic destinies, spanning two world wars and decades of aftermath, play a powerful and evocative part in this wonderfully vivid and moving portrait of the past.
– Wayne Price, author of Furnace and Mercy Seat

Catch the Moments as They Fly is, simultaneously, an engrossing and affecting love story, a family saga, and a deft portrait of Scottish urban life in the wake of two world wars. Subtle, layered, and full of captivating historical detail as well as vividly drawn characters, this is a novel to get lost in. Absolutely compelling.
– Jane Mckie, author of, most recently, Carnation Lily Lily Rose