Product Description
Shelf Life
Author: Livia Franchini
Format: Paperback
'Shelf Life is whip-smart, slyly heartbreaking, and I felt the truth of it in my bones.' — Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure
Ruth is thirty years old. She works as a nurse in a care home and her fiancé has just broken up with her. The only thing she has left of him is their shopping list for the upcoming week.
Starting with six eggs, and working through spaghetti and strawberries, apples and tea bags, this inventive novel builds a picture of a woman defined by the people she serves; her patients, her friends, and, most of all, her partner of ten years. Without him, Ruth needs to find out - with conditioner and single cream and a lot of sugar - who she is when she stands alone.
With her fresh unpredictable style, Franchini skewers modern relationships and toxic masculinity, moving effortlessly between humour and heartbreak to tell the story of a woman rebuilding herself on her own terms.
About the Author
Livia Franchini is a writer and translator from Tuscany, Italy. Her recent publications include the novel Shelf Life, her English-language translation of Lorenza Mazzetti’s The Sky Is Falling, and the anthology Too Little / Too Hard: Writers on the Intersections of Work, Time and Value, co-edited with Lucy Mercer. Livia is Lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, where she also coordinates the Goldsmiths Prize. She lives in south east London.
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