‘The worst thing about men taking over the cooking of fancy food in restaurants is that every dish now arrives covered in ejaculant, all those drizzles and foam and schmeers…’
The world can be frustrating, can’t it? Especially these days. Our July Book of the Month, Things Are Against Us, captures that ire in provocative essays loaded with excoriating wit.
Booker-Prize shortlisted author Lucy Ellmann’s first essay collection covers everything from feminism to environmental catastrophe; labour strikes to sex strikes; Little House on the Prairie to Donald Trump. It rails against air travel, bras, Agatha Christie, and pleads for sanity in a post-President-Trump world.
Funny, smart, and biting, Things Are Against Us is an electric collection bound to spark debate.
Praise for Things Are Against Us:
‘“Let’s complain”, extorts Lucy Ellmann in a preface to her first essay collection, Things Are Against Us. And complain she does, though the verb seems barely adequate for the atrabilious, freewheeling fury that spills from its pages. Aimed at everything from air travel to zips, genre writing to men (above all, men), her ire is matched only by an irrepressible comic impulse, from which bubbles forth kitsch puns, wisecracking whimsy and one liners both bawdy and venomous. … She’s out to foment revolution, and this book is nothing less than a manifesto.’ – Observer
‘A wickedly funny, rousing, depressing, caps-driven work of linguistic gymnastics hellbent on upbraiding the deleterious forces of the prevailing misogyny’ – The Guardian
‘A series of extremely entertaining rants… about everything that is bothering Lucy Ellmann in the world.’ – BBC Front Row Culture Pick
‘Witty, excoriating… It’s hard to imagine that Lucy Ellmann’s first collection of essays will have pride of place in the library of the Bullingdon Club.’ – Independent
Things Are Against Us by Lucy Ellmann is available from Galley Beggar Press now
(9781913111137, p/b, £9.99)
Or support your local bookstore.
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