Disappoint Me

(Hardback)

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Description

A voice-driven, funny and poignant exploration of millennial angst, race, trans panic, and the allure of bougie domesticity, Disappoint Me will delight and provoke readers in equal measure. 'A genuine literary talent, a gimlet-eyed cartographer of the human heart' Sharlene Teo Max is thirty, a published poet and grossly overpaid legal counsel for a tech company. She's living her best life! Or is she The debris of years of dysphoria and failed relationships rattle around in her head. When she tumbles down the stairs at a New Year's Eve party and wakes up in hospital alone, she decides to make some changes. First things first- a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity. Enter Vincent, corporate lawyer and hobby baker. His trad friendship group may as well speak a different language to Max, and his Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman. It's uncertain terrain, but Vincent cares for Max in a way she'd long given up on as a foolish fantasy. Yet Vincent is carrying his own baggage. On his gap year in Thailand a decade prior, he vies for the attention of a gorgeous traveller, Alex, with secrets of her own. Is Vincent really the new face of the Enlightened Man, or will the ghosts of his past sabotage his and Max's happiness

Reviews

Dinans gift as a writer is her ability to make us feel when her characters cry, we cry; when they laugh, we laugh * Irish Times *
The way Dinan writes about love, loss, growing up, transitioning and our bodies took my breath away * Travis Alabanza, Guardian *
Bellies announces Nicola Dinan as a genuine literary talent, a gimlet-eyed cartographer of the human heart. I'm a huge fan and I'll read anything she writes * Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti *
I can't wait to see what Nicola Dinan does next * Ceclie Pin, author of Wandering Souls *
Dinan is a huge talent and I'll read everything she writes * Annie Lord, author of Notes on Heartbreak *
Nicola is a beautiful, beautiful writer * Ore Agbaje-Williams, author of The Three of Us *
Dinans prose is heartfelt and endlessly readable. She explores her characters with sympathy and patience, never casting villains, only complicated humans who are trying their best * Readers Digest *
A very, very talented writer * Liv Little, author of Rosewater *

Author Bio

Nicola Dinan grew up in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur and now lives in London. Bellies, her debut, was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Polari First Book Prize, shortlisted for the Mo Siewcharran Prize, and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Her second novel, Disappoint Me, releases in 2025.