Small but mighty

(a short story about why you should buy my book in paperback)

I really wanted the teenage girl on the cover of my coming of age novel to look like she had the power to block out the sun. Especially now it’s going into paperback July 3rd. I wanted that feeling that you’re laying on your back in the grass, hoping they’ll bend down and kiss you like they used to, but in the end they just stand there, stealing your sunshine. And what are you going to do about that? What are you going to do to get your power back when you don’t even have your own credit card? That’s how I felt about best friends at that age, and older male crushes, and the way they crossed over in my mind. I wanted everything they could possibly give me and also to completely destroy them.

You should pre-order it now, if you care about me, even if “caring” means you wake up in the dead of night on holiday with the terrible sensation that you left the oven on until, blinking in the dark, you realise you’ve actually jolted awake because you hate my writing so much. If that’s you, pre-order it and slap yourself in the face with it with one hand whilst pleasuring yourself with the other. Make it a proper a Hate-Read.

Except, if you have taste, like Jonathan Coe and Nussaibah Younis, Lucy Foley, Sara Pascoe and Natalie Portman’s Book Club which picked it as their November choice…you’re going to love it. The best reviewed book of my career has now transitioned, transfigured and maybe even transgressed its way into paperback. With the weight of the hardback off you, you can carry Father Figure in your bag as you gallivant around town, use it as the most elegant lipstick blotter, wield it to kill a wasp. Or use it as they do delicate wood blocks in Korean spas - as a pillow to rest your head on, maybe in grass. Look up from it at the sun, until someone you long for blocks it out and you have to figure out what’s to become of them. And of you.