How to Be Somebody Else

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Description

When Kate begins an affair with Gabe in New York City, nothing will be the same again - discover this stylish and sexy debut novel. An uncoming-of-age in New York City 'Has literary oomph' SUNDAY TIMES 'An impressive debut novel' OBSERVER 'Intelligent, confident and original' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT Spring 2015, New York. On the surface Dylan has achieved the impossible - a life in New York, eight years of making this stick. And yet it is not the thing she'd imagined (what had she imagined). When she walks out of her career, then apartment, and into a housesit for an artist she's never met, she does not tell her friends, her parents back in England, or Matt, her boyfriend, living on the West Coast. Job-free, rent-free, she'll make good on her book, herself, other things too, she's thinking, when her neighbour Kate shows up and invites her to a party. There she meets Gabe, who happens to be married to Kate but insists, 'it's not a thing'. The affair that follows consumes her and she begins to consider what is fixed and what is variable. Can a person be both Is Gabe the thing he seems Is she As spring turns to summer, her experiments in living test loyalties and boundaries until an unexpected encounter between the two couples forces her to confront her future. 'Brilliant... Luscious prose' ANNIE LORD 'Unsettling and original' TESSA HADLEY ***A MARIE CLAIRE BEST BOOK OF 2024***

Reviews

Sharp and entertaining * Daily Mail *
Impressive A book founded on the anxiety that undermines our drive towards attachment and stability, and it thrives on a constant sense of slippage and precarity, a jumpy exploration of what it might feel like to cede control, and what might take its place * Observer *
Pountney has an admirable clarity of voice and her book is consistently impressive Intelligent, confident and original * Times Literary Supplement *
How to Be Somebody Else has literary oomph... What sets this debut apart is the way it sustains its sparky style to the last page without stinting on the serious stuff * Sunday Times *
Brutal and brilliant, in luscious prose, How to Be Somebody Else shows us what happens when life starts to unfurl -- Annie Lord, author of Notes on Heartbreak

Author Bio

Miranda Pountney is a writer based in London. She holds a BA in English Literature from Oxford University and an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. How to Be Somebody Else is her first novel.