Description
In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day 2019, we’re proud to present Lucy Ellmann’s I Dated Graham Greene, a tongue-in-cheek essay about books and bookshops and all the anxieties they ameliorate—or possibly induce. Hand-bound and printed on 70-pound Zephyr laid in a limited edition of 1,000, no two are exactly alike. Like a good bookshop, you never know what you might find.
Praise for Lucy Ellmann
“[Ellmann] demonstrates her many skills as a writer: an unsentimental eye for the incongruities of modern life; a bawdy sense of humor, and a distinctive voice, by turns angry and regretful, poetic and dyspeptic . . . It is in these last few pages of the book that Ms. Ellmann demonstrates that she is not merely a clever collage maker, but a gifted writer capable of exploring the tragedies as well as the absurdities of family life.”—Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
“When I first read Ellmann, I loved her bizarreness, her ferocious humour. But she’s even angrier now, more indignant, and that’s what gives this book its sly substance. The streak of fury that runs through it is stealthy, apparently feminine, cloaked in ditziness. But underneath there are claws and teeth.—Julie Myerson, Guardian
“Ellmann transcends the novel form―she’s in a class of her own.”—Cosmopolitan
“[I]t’s somehow hard not to be optimistic in the hands of a writer so angry and intelligent.”—Patrick Ness, Guardian
“I have been told that reviewers complained about the use of screaming capitals in Lucy Ellmann’s first book, which is why she now packs every page with them . . . Her latest novel, a melded spoof of medical romances and Jane Eyre, is as lunatic and splenetic and distinctive as anything that will be published this year . . . I begin to suspect she may be some sort of genius.—Victoria Lane, Telegraph
“Funny, angry, sarcastic and utterly individual, Ellmann has been described as ‘one of literature’s most well-kept secrets’.”—Alison Flood, Observer
“Ellmann’s writing is fearless . . . a whistle-stop tour of the paraphernalia that litters all our minds. Oddments that most of us notice and discard are here burnished into literary devices.”—Alice Fishburn, Financial Times
“A true poet . . . Ellmann is a bright and shining talent.”—Meredith Phillips, Austin Chronicle
“Original, funny and slickly written . . . an angry and imaginative tour de force, salted with caustic insights and sweetened with pathos.”—Daily Mail
“For all its satire and tricksy inter-textuality…simply a big happy book about loving women. Now that’s shocking.”—Melissa Katsoulis, Times
“Rarely has there been such a mischievous affirmation of the meaninglessness of existence.”—Lisa Allardice, Telegraph
“A lively ride … bolshy, life-affirming, feminist and energetic. It makes you long to chuck your job, gulp oysters and run naked through the surf. This is all wonderful.”—Lucy Atkins, Sunday Times
“If there were a laureate for anger, it should go to Lucy Ellmann.”—Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday
