Lucy Ellmann

Ducks, Newburyport

An utterly original novel, longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize in which one woman navigates, through compelling inner monologue, the tension and disquiet of contemporary America.

A hilarious and poignant journey through our puny universe, this is a masterpiece of disquiet

Dot in the Universe

Ördekler, Newburyport

A middle-aged cellist hides away in a tiny British cottage, mad at the world. Not until her beloved cello is stolen--and her former lover, an American poet, returns--does Eloise emerge from her shell.

A Lament

Man Or Mango?

A fast, funny and furious novel from the author of Dot in the Universe

Varying Degrees of Hoplessness

"A blackly comedic fable" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times) from the Booker shortlisted author of Ducks, Newburyport. It's your worst nightmare: instead of being dead, you're alive! Dot thinks she's perfect, with her blond hair, pointy nose, and pink skin. She lives on the east coast of England with her magnificent hubby, cooking him gourmet meals and crashing the car. So one day she decides to End It All. But-Dot BLOWS it! After a brief sojourn in the underworld (populated by "underaged, underdeveloped underlings all, understated in their undershirts and UNDERSTANDING VERY LITTLE"), Dot is reincarnated, first as a possum, and then as a girl in Ohio. A hilarious and poignant journey through our puny universe, this is a masterpiece of disquiet.

A Manhattan plastic surgeon's life takes a wild turn after he bumps into the woman who helped him after an ankle-spraining slip on some ice in this new novel from the author of Sweet Desserts and Dot in the Universe. Original. 20,000 first printing.

Mimi

Eloïse and George, a pair of star-crossed lovers... Eloïse spends her time avoiding the human race and making lists of damaging encounters and the length of time it takes her to recover from them: 'Speaking to postman: half an hour... Preparing to make phonecall (days) indefinite'. Yet she is also desperately yearning for George, her sometime lover, an American poet embarked on an epic of ice-hockey. Equally besotted, George has pursued Eloïse to England. When the two are reunited by chance the results are truly explosive...

A scorching collection of essays from the Booker-shortlisted author of Ducks, Newburyport

Things Are Against Us

Bloomsbury Publishing is given over to the life of the mind - the entire building is adorned, insulated and overwhelmed by books. Yet the snacking habits of the Editorial Department have given rise to a problematic situation - the place has been invaded by mice! Into this mousey coup d'etat steps Tom, a marvellous heathen of a ginger farm cat who's never seen a book in his life. His career begins promisingly, but his effectiveness soon comes into question. Tom settles so well into the Bloomsbury routine that he sleeps soundly in his armchair at night while the mice run riot upstairs. Tom, it seems, is not cut out for mousing. He is an intellectual, he is Tom the Obscure, and destined for greater things...

Tom the Obscure

Bach, sculpture, plastic surgery, public speaking and a New York love story like no other - this is Lucy Ellmann's most extraordinary work of art to date

By the author of Ducks, Newburyport, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2019 and the Goldsmiths Prize Dot used to think she was perfect, with her pointy nose, pink skin and blonde hair. But now she lives on Abalone Avenue with a husband who chases women and swordfish. And she has a rather icky Fatal Flaw. And the universe doesn't give a damn! So DOT decides to End It All. Will death be fast? Slow? EMBARRASING? But despite her valiant suicide by tea cosy followed by a jaunt to the morgue, DOT wakes up...

"By the author of Ducks, Newburyport, shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize, Goldsmiths Prize and Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award It's Christmas Eve in Manhattan. Harrison Hanafan, noted plastic surgeon, falls on his ass. So far, so good. 'Ya can't sit there all day, buddy, looking up people's skirts!' chides a weird gal in a coat like a duvet - Mimi! She kindly conjures for him the miracle of a taxi. Recuperating in his apartment with Schubert, Bette Davis, and a foundling cat, Harrison adds items to his life's work, a List of Melancholy Things (Walmart, puppetry, Velcro, whale eyes, shrimp-eating contests...). But when he receives a dreaded invitation to address his old school, Mimi reappears, with all her curves and chaos. She and Harrison fall emphatically in love. And, as their love-making reaches a whole new kind of climax, the sweet smell of revolution is in the air."

« L’un des plus grands livres du siècle. » The Irish Times Une femme, mère au foyer, vit l’essentiel du quotidien dans sa cuisine. L’âge est venu, elle a surmonté un cancer, et dans sa tête elle rumine le monde, ses folies, ses dangers, les fusillades dans les écoles, la crise économique qui fait toujours payer les mêmes, la pauvreté, l’angoisse du lendemain, les équilibres plus que précaires, sa mère décédée d’une longue maladie. Ça se passe dans l’Ohio. Et ça nous parle, au plus profond, de tout, partout. Cette femme pense aux diverses tâches domestiques qui l’attendent, nécessaires à faire tourner le ménage. Elle s’indigne, contre Trump, ce président terrifiant, ou face au dérèglement de la planète, mais aussi contre la domination patriarcale, l’asservissement des femmes ou l’extermination des Amérindiens. Tout cela roule dans sa tête. Et c’est parti pour une formidable aventure narrative, en une coulée pleine de rebondissements, scandée par une formule litanique – « le fait que » – qui vous emporte dans une apnée littéraire exceptionnelle. Dans ce livre finaliste du Booker Prize et salué par une presse dithyrambique, Lucy Ellmann réussit le miracle de nous faire toucher à l’universel par le biais du plus intime et du plus infime. Par son humour corrosif, elle mène une charge impitoyable contre l’Amérique et le monde d’aujourd’hui, et dresse un admirable portrait de femme – de toutes les femmes. Traduit de l'anglais par Claro

Les Lionnes

By the author of Ducks, Newburyport, shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize, Goldsmiths Prize and Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award Winner of the Guardian First Book Award Suzy Schwarz has learnt one or two things about life: other people know how you should live better than you do; sisters (especially Fran) can destroy your sanity and self-esteem; lust calls for careful timing because it rarely coincides with that of your partner; and most heartbreaking of all, parents die on you, leaving you grieving. The only thing that provides constant solace when times are bad (and they usually are) is food.

Sweet Desserts

‘There are three kinds of strike I’d recommend: a housework strike, a labour strike, and a sex strike. I can’t wait for the first two.’ Things Are Against Us is the first collection of essays from Booker Prize-shortlisted Lucy Ellmann. Bold, angry, despairing and very, very funny, these essays cover everything – from matriarchy to environmental catastrophe to Little House on the Prairie. Ellmann calls for a moratorium on air travel, rages against bras, gives Doris Day and Agatha Christie a drubbing, and pleads for sanity in a world that – well, a world that spent four years in the company of Donald Trump, that ‘tremendously sick, terrible, nasty, lowly, truly pathetic, reckless, sad, weak, lazy, incompetent, third-rate, clueless, not smart, dumb as a rock, all talk, wacko, zero-chance lying liar’. Things Are Against Us is electric. It’s vital. These are essays bursting with energy, and reading them feels like sticking your hand in the mains socket. Lucy Ellmann is the writer we need to guide us through these crazy times.

By the author of Ducks, Newburyport, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2019 and the Goldsmiths Prize The tranquillity of a rural backwater - SHATTERED! The ancient arts of medicine - EXPOSED! Her darling cleft-chinned doctor - FORCED TO FIGHT FOR HIS LIFE! It was a time of wiping. A time of bandaging. Of patients and their incessant needs. In a world where nurses never wash their hands, and doctors are the lowest of the low, one enormous nurse stands up for LOVE - a nurse that will make you fart with fear...

Doctors and Nurses

By the author of Ducks, Newburyport, shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize, Goldsmiths Prize and Saltire Fiction Book of the Year AwardEloise is a wreck: jobless, friendless, burdened by Damaging Encounters with milkmen. She proclaims herself a hermit, and reduces her contact with the outside world to written communication with the Queen and manufacturers of toilet-roll holders. Yet she yearns hopelessly for roguish American poet George. Freed from the ties of marriage and lettuce soup, George has just arrived in England with the vague intention of finding Eloise, but has been waylaid by pinball. Fierce and funny, Man or Mango? is a seething, searing, rollicking reflection on love, death, sex, men - and mangoes.

"By the author of Ducks, Newburyport, shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize, Goldsmiths Prize and Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award Winner of the Guardian First Book Award Suzy Schwarz has learnt one or two things about life- other people know how you should live better than you do; sisters (especially Fran) can destroy your sanity and self-esteem; lust calls for careful timing because it rarely coincides with that of your partner; and most heartbreaking of all, parents die on you, leaving you grieving. The only thing that provides constant solace when times are bad (and they usually are) is food."

Lucy Ellmann

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