Things Are Against Us

From the Booker-shortlisted author of DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT

'Ellmann has long delighted in provocation' ?New Yorker

‘A writer so intelligent and angry’ —Financial Times

Things Are Against Us is the first collection of essays from Booker Prize-shortlisted author Lucy Ellmann. It is everything you might expect from such a fiery writer – which is to say, entirely unexpected. Bold, angry, despairing, and very, very funny, the essays cover everything from matriarchy to environmental catastrophe to Little House on the Prairie. Ellmann calls for a moratorium on air travel – ‘You’d think a global pandemic would be an opportunity to reconsider the whole crazy business.’ She rails against bras – ‘Men have managed to eroticise bras, but THEY DON’T HAVE TO WEAR THEM.’ She gives Agatha Christie a drubbing – ‘atrocious, but ideal for people with colds’. And pleads for sanity in a world that . . . well, a world that has spent four years in the company of Trump – ‘That big, fat loser of a president, that nasty, sick, terrible, lowly, truly pathetic, reckless, sad, weak, lazy, incompetent, third-rate, clueless, not smart, dumb as a rock, all talk, wacko, goofball and all-round low-life . . .’