How to Be Somebody Else

Omtale

An un-coming-of-age in New York City ';Has literary oomph.' The Sunday Times ';An impressive debut novel.' Observer ';Intelligent, confident and original.' Times Literary SupplementSpring 2015, New York. On the surface, Dylan has achieved the impossible a life in New York, eight years of making it work. And yet, it's not quite what she imagined (what had she imagined?). When she walks out of her career, then her apartment, and into a house-sit for an artist she's never met, she doesn't tell her friends, her parents back in England, or Matt, her boyfriend on the West Coast. Job-free, rent-free, Dylan plans to make progress on her book and herself. But when her neighbor Kate invites her to a party, she meets Gabe, Kate's husband, who insists ';it's not a thing.' The affair that follows consumes her, and soon Dylan is forced to question what is fixed and what is variable. Can a person be both? Is Gabe what he seems? Is she? As spring turns to summer, Dylan's experiments in living begin to test the limits of loyalty, desire, and self-definition until one unexpected encounter between the two couples forces her to confront what she truly wants for her future. ';Brilliant luscious prose.' Annie Lord ';Unsettling and original.' Tessa HadleyA Marie Claire Best Book of 2024