Losing It
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- £1.99
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- £1.99
Publisher Description
‘Julia Greenfield is entirely imperfect and completely sympathetic, and Losing It is a bright gem of a novel.’
—Lauren Fox, author of Days of Awe and Friends Like Us
Twenty-six year old Julia Greenfield has long suspected that everyone is having fun without her.
It’s not that she’s unhappy, per se. It’s just that she’s not exactly happy either.
She hasn’t done anything spontaneous since about 2003. Shouldn’t she be running a start up? Or going backpacking? Or exploring uncharted erogenous zones with inappropriate men?
Trapped between news of her mother’s latent sexual awakening and her spinster aunt’s odd behaviour – Julia has finally snapped. It’s time to take some risks, and get a life.
After all – what has she got to lose?
Reviews
“A charming, truthful story about a lovably imperfect young woman…a witty and insightful novel about the mysteries of human connection.”
—Maggie Shipstead, author of Seating Arrangements and Astonish Me
"Every single page of Emma Rathbone's Losing It contains a line so funny, so awkward, so perfect, that you do not want this momentous summer to end. Rathbone's writing feels effortless, but it detonates in such wonderful ways. An amazing book."
—Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang
“Emma Rathbone has the wisdom to understand that we are all the protagonists of our own stories, and the sense of humour to recognise the absurdity of that fact…Her Julia Greenfield is entirely imperfect and completely sympathetic, and Losing It is a bright gem of a novel.”
—Lauren Fox, author of Days of Awe and Friends Like Us
"A candid yet funny take on just what desire and love mean." —The Millions, The Most Anticipated Books of 2016
" Rathbone reliably wrings the humour out of this situation, but more impressively, she manages to evoke its poignancy…. Amusing but also smart about people and unexpectedly sweet." —Kirkus
"A voice that is at once heartbreaking and hilarious, and startlingly true." —Lydia Peelle
About the author
Emma Rathbone is the author of the novel The Patterns of Paper Monsters. She is the recipient of a Christopher Isherwood Grant in Fiction, and her work can also be seen in the Virginia Quarterly Review and on newyorker.com. A graduate of the University of Virginia Creative Writing Program, Rathbone lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this charming second novel from the author of The Patterns of Paper Monsters, a frustrated 26-year-old virgin relocates to Durham, N.C., for a summer in a last ditch effort to lose her virginity. After moving in with her eccentric, spinsterish aunt Viv, Julia Greenfield takes on a menial clerical job at a law firm, where she meets and develops a fast crush on lawyer Elliot. The reader soon gleans what Julia learns only later: Elliot is less available than he seems, Aunt Viv has her own relationship issues, and Julia's taste in men hints that she suffers from a kind of romantic amnesia. These tensions are brought to a predictable but enjoyable climax, in which Julia complicates her relationships with Elliot and Aunt Viv. Deeper than it lets on, the book's distinct delight is the nimble dance its author plays with the somewhat frivolous conceit, embracing its pulpiness to entertain, and pushing it to surprising places.
