Woo Woo

A darkly funny, pyrotechnic and deeply unsettling novel from the internationally acclaimed author of New Animal.


SHORTLISTED - Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction


'Confirms Baxter as one of the most exciting Australian novelists to have emerged this decade . . . she's the real deal.' Readings 




'A a spooky, darkly combustible feast for anyone who's ever wanted to run naked into a forest, screaming.' Books+Publishing 


'Thrillingly weird, squirming with life and throbbing with rage, Woo Woo often had me breathless and vibrating with delight. An incandescent howl of a book.' Emily Maguire, author of Rapture



'Woo Woo - what a delight. Richly dark and funny, this exploration of art and meaning, of the feminine experience, of modern madness had me stopping to catch my breath. Brilliant, original and loaded with the unexpected.' Sofie Laguna, author of Infinite Splendours



'Visceral, hyperreal and hilarious there is no book like Woo Woo and no writer like Ella Baxter. I loved every single stunning sentence.' Paige Clark, author of She Is Haunted


Sabine returned from the shops carrying a bag containing an effortless pair of Christian Wijnants fringed trousers and Ann Demeulemeeter Crinkle Nero boots. The sales assistant had agreed that the combination made Sabine look exactly like an artist. 'A conceptual artist?' Sabine asked, and the sales assistant said, 'Or an actual artist.' 


Sabine is having a moment. Her new exhibition, Fuck You, Help Me, is opening soon and, as her gallerist says, 'Hell is an artist three days before their exhibition opens.' But it's not only this coming milestone that is causing Sabine to melt down.


She is being stalked. As exhibition day draws closer, so too does the man who has been watching her. As his approaches become more overt and threatening, Sabine's fear amplifies and transforms into something feral and primal. And then things start to get really strange.


Darkly funny, intense and unsettling, Woo Woo is an astonishing and unflinching dissection of creativity and obsession, love and passion, vengeance and rage. Nothing will prepare you for this literary firestorm from the author of the internationally acclaimed debut New Animal.


Praise for Woo Woo:


'Baxter has somehow managed to create a work that is both lavishly excessive and tightly restrained. Woo Woo is a surreal fever dream but also an astute domestic portrait. It's genuinely terrifying and laugh-out-loud funny. I've never read anything quite like it.' Anna Snoekstra, author of Out of Breath 


'Ella Baxter has created a frightening, brilliant and utterly invigorating novel, something that radiates, darkly, on your bedside table. Her sentences gleam like a knife held at night. Woo Woo captures the psychology of making art in the present, to be cut up and devoured online, flayed between discourse and obscene acts live-streamed.' Paul Dalla Rosa, author of An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life 


'Ella Baxter's second novel is brilliant and profane, pretty much guaranteed to provoke the provokable and delight people who like weird feelings and private thoughts. It's a wildly entertaining book, surprising on every page, and it dares you to wonder what the difference is, in life, between the dark bits and the fun bits.' Ronnie Scott, author of Shirley 


'Woo Woo is sharp and heady, the kind of writing that makes you feel slightly drunk and bewitched. Its exploration of creativity as a gothic haunting, as an indignity to be endured, is delicious, delightfully revolting and unlike anything you've read before.' Sin ad Stubbins, author of In My Defence, I Have No Defence 


'A primal scream of selfhood into the toilet bowl of the art world. Feral, guttural.' Will Cox, author of Hyacinth 


'Sharp, clever, and wickedly funny, Baxter's Woo Woo is an unsettling delight.' Monica Dux, author of Lapsed 


'Equal parts freakshow and feast, artistic haunting and portrait of the artist as huntress - not to mention, funny as fuck. Ella Baxter's prose is a force of nature.' Laura Elizabeth Woollett, author of West Girls 


'I wish I could have written this book. I don't know how to do it justice. Woo Woo and its glorious, propulsive, feral protagonist mark a new frontier in fiction, where everything beautiful is laid out like a picnic, and we stomp on it. This book is hungry and hilarious, with prose so exquisite it makes me scream. I am in awe of Ella Baxter and her spectacular brain.' Laura McPhee-Browne, author of Little Plum


Praise for New Animal:


'Baxter's prose is a living thing, wild and snarling, its jagged claws and honed teeth unforgiving and relentless.' Foreword UK


'Profound, profane and darkly hilarious.' Bri Lee, bestselling author of Eggshell Skull and The Work 


'New Animal makes for compelling reading an intense, viscerally affecting book.' The Sydney Morning Herald


'Funny, raw, gutsy and stealthily sweet.' Emily Maguire, bestselling author of Love Objects


'Has all the hallmarks of a literary sensation ... this is a fearless and remarkable debut.' The Weekend Australian