When writing about women's lives, it's important to me to get below the surface and question the things that really have an impact on how we live and breathe, how we relate to others as friends or lovers, how we feel guilt, pain, joy, and ecstasy, how we relish triumph and mitigate disaster, how we grow old and hope and think and make our way from start to finish in a turbulent world. I try to tell the truth as a writer and make new discoveries along the way. I’ve published two novels and two collections of short stories, and I’m a reviewer and writer on literature, a teacher too.
This book takes you on a rollercoaster through contemporary lives and dilemmas, moving and inspiring you on the way.
From a young woman teacher with a big alcohol problem and a mess of a relationship through a lonely middle-aged male whose use of sex workers damages his ability to relate to regular women, this is a no-holds-barred exploration of how we live now.
Moshfegh shows us the pain, the humour, the sorrow, and the potential joy, in beautifully written prose with a real edge to it.
An electrifying first collection from one of the most exciting short story writers of our time
"I can't recall the last time I laughed this hard at a book. Simultaneously, I'm shocked and scandalized. She's brilliant, this young woman."-David Sedaris
Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel Eileen was one of the literary events of 2015. Garlanded with critical acclaim, it was named a book of the year by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and won…
Love, desire, falling too passionately for a married man, the world may be different from when this book was published in 1936, but the angst, the joy, the terror, and the hard choices remain the same.
An intelligent, capable, charismatic woman falls for a handsome, upper-class man, tantalizingly just out of her social and emotional reach. Will he leave his wife and the easy security of a stable relationship? Will love trump duty? Life-changing decisions reach a climax in the office of a back-street abortionist, where the snare of passion and its potentially destructive consequences are laid bare.
Written in lyrical and episodic prose, this is a truly timeless and memorable read.
ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BRITISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
'With brilliant dialogue and intense passages of elation and despair, The Weather in the Streets takes you on the rollercoaster of their relationship' ESTHER FREUD, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH'Lehmann legitimised a type of writing that took on deep personal themes' ENGLISH PEN'The first writer to filter her stories through a woman's feelings & perceptions' ANITA BROOKNERTaking up where Invitation to the Waltz left off, The Weather in the Streets shows us Olivia Curtis ten years older, a failed marriage behind her, thinner, sadder, and apparently not much wiser.…
Who was the man who would become Caesar's lieutenant, Brutus' rival, Cleopatra's lover, and Octavian's enemy?
When his stepfather is executed for his involvement in the Catilinarian conspiracy, Mark Antony and his family are disgraced. His adolescence is marked by scandal and mischief, his love affairs are fleeting, and yet,…
This pared-back and intense analysis of female isolation in a modern city breaks all the rules of ‘good writing.’ Telling not showing; unrelievedly inward; arguably solipsistic; it charts the descent of a conscientious copywriter into drunken depression. Could an off-beat relationship with a man who seems to care about her, for what she is, possibly haul her back into a functioning life?
In its totally absorbing dramatization of our hopes, desires, disappointments, and perennial insecurities, this book shows our flawed and fragile human selves in remorseless clarity. At the same time, it gives hope in the value of human affection and the kindness of friends.
From literary sensation and International Booker Prize-shortlisted author Mieko Kawakami, the bestelling author of Breasts and Eggs and Heaven comes All the Lovers in the Night, an extraordinary, deeply moving and insightful story set in contemporary Tokyo.
'A brief, compelling study of alienation and friendship; I binge-read it in one sitting.' - Rebecca F Kuang, bestselling author of Babel
Fuyuko Irie is a freelance proofreader in her thirties. Living alone in an overwhelming city and unable to form meaningful relationships, she has little contact with anyone other than her colleague, Hijiri. But a chance encounter with a man named Mitsutsuka…
A houseful of women, moving from their long-term home in New Zealand to a new location by the sea. What you get in this short tale is an accumulation of moments that add up to an intense mosaic of the life of women in a male-dominated family.
From the little girl Kezia to the pregnant wife Linda, from the sometimes benevolent grandmother to the handyman who chops off the head of a live duck to see it still running, this book enthralls in its detail, its poetic and emotional resonance, and the insights it gives into female consciousness in a world of constrictions.
Don’t look for ‘what happens next’; look instead for the diamond facets the story reveals in every sentence. When you get to the end, you may feel that this book is a jewel beyond price.
Radical, witty and inventive, Katherine Mansfield is one of the twentieth century's most accomplished short-story writers and this selection of stories showcases her dazzling skill.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. Prelude & Other Stories is edited and introduced by Professor Meg Jensen.
This selection of stories by Katherine Mansfield showcases her remarkable ability to delve into the human mind; in stories such as 'The Garden Party' she reveals the tension between innocence…
As an American widow flush with cash, she has hopes of finding the burning, passionate love she never experienced in her marriage. But instead, she found The Ladies Alpine Society, and is now pressed into planning a fundraising ball with the…
These short stories lure you in to a world of fantastical distortions and mythical resonances, which make you look differently at women’s lives.
A young girl with an eating disorder turns into an eel; a group of female friends go hunting for male conquests whom they kill and eat to satisfy their appetites. In a world of anarchic desires and obtuse relationships, strange and inexplicable metamorphoses take place. Violence bridges the gap between human and animal, between desire and carnal action.
In candid language not for the faint-hearted, this book probes the potentially dark recesses of the female psyche against a timeless backdrop of rural folklore and magical possibility.
Daisy Johnson's Fen is a liminal land. Real people live their lives here. They wrestle with familiar instincts, with sex and desire, with everyday routine. But the wild is always close at hand, ready to erupt. This is a place where animals and people commingle and fuse, where curious metamorphoses take place, where myth and dark magic still linger. So here a teenager may starve herself into the shape of an eel. A house might fall in love with a girl. A woman might give birth to a - well what?…
My book explores how we navigate love, desire, home, and community in an increasingly complex and uncertain world. Each story questions how meaningful connections can be formed–with yourself, your life, and others. A young girl whose mother is mentally unstable has a relationship with a much older man and learns the cost of it; in the forests of Scandinavia, a woman works through the loss of her children; a man builds his dream home in a Spanish finca and comes to terms with inevitable disappointment; a middle-aged woman seeks surrogacy in a Mumbai clinic, with equivocal outcomes.
This book’s diverse narratives unflinchingly examine the darker aspects of emotional, sexual, and familial relationships but celebrate the joy of being alive in an unfathomable world.
Ava Winston likes her life of routine in Lexington, Kentucky. Then a tornado blows it away. Ava is safe in the basement, but when she emerges, only one corner of her home stands. Rather than crumbling under the loss, she feels a load lifted. Maybe something beyond the familiar is…
Bright but unassuming Marilyn Jones has some grown-up decisions to make, especially after Mama goes to prison for drugs and larceny. With no one to take care of them, Marilyn and her younger, mentally challenged brother, Carol, get tossed into the foster care…
