Things Are Against Us

A scorching collection of essays from the Booker-shortlisted author of Ducks, Newburyport

There are three forms of strike I'd recommend- a housework strike, a labour strike, and a sex strike. I can't wait for the first two.

The first collection of essays from Lucy Ellmann, Things Are Against Us is everything you might expect from such a fiery writer-which is to say, entirely unexpected.

Bold, angry, despairing and very, very funny, these essays cover everything from matriarchy to environmental catastrophe to Little House on the Prairie to Agatha Christie. Ellmann calls for a moratorium on air travel, rails against bras, and pleads for sanity in a world that-well, a world that spent four years in the company of Donald Trump, that 'tremendously sick, terrible, nasty, lowly, truly pathetic, reckless, sad, weak, lazy, incompetent, third-rate, clueless, not smart, dumb as a rock, all talk, wacko, zero-chance lying liar'.

Things Are Against Us is electric. It's vital. These are essays bursting with energy. Reading them feels like sticking your hand in the mains socket. Lucy Ellmann is the writer we need to guide us through these crazy times.