Sweet desserts - Lucy Ellmann

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 AwardSuzy 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 is the author of Ducks, Newburyport, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize, Goldsmiths Prize and Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award. She was born in Illinois and dragged to England as a teenager. Her first novel, Sweet Desserts, won the Guardian Fiction Prize. It was followed by Varying Degrees of Hopelessness, Man or Mango? A Lament, Dot in the Universe, Doctors & Nurses and Mimi. She now lives in Edinburgh.

Outright rapture
Clive James

Lucy Ellmann does write a lovely novel ... an enchanting, enchanted book
Fay Weldon

A triumph ... there isn't a sentimental evasion or a dull bit of writing in the book ... it is painful to read but also exhilarating ... Lucy Ellmann is an original
Guardian

A wild book, in which angst-ridden confessions are interrupted by excerpts from cook books, authoritarian healthy-eating guides, pretentious theses on modern art, officious radio sex-advice shows, diaries, suicide notes, and pauses for American ice-cream and Rich Tea biscuits. Even the index breaks the rules ... Thanks to its spirited author (the story) is funny in spite of itself - and refreshingly unguarded
Observer