Things Are Against Us

Written by Lucy Ellmann

Narrated by Stephanie Ellyne

Things Are Against Us is the first collection of essays from Lucy Ellmann. Provocative, smart, angry, wise, and very, very funny, the essays in Things Are Against Us cover everything - from feminism to environmental catastrophe; labour strikes to sex strikes; Little House On The Prairie to patriarchal terrorism. Lucy calls for a moratorium on air travel. She rails against bras. She gives Agatha Christie a drubbing. And she pleads for sanity in a world that has spent four years in the company of Donald Trump. Things Are Against Us is electric. It's vital. These are essays bursting with energy, and listening to them feels like sticking your hand in the mains socket. Lucy Ellmann is just the writer we need to guide us through these crazy times.

"Ellmann has long delighted in provocation.” THE NEW YORKER

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd
• Release date: Jul 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781004049592

Lucy Ellmann

Here's the thing: Lucy Ellmann is extremely shy. She’s so awkward and self-conscious that meeting strangers, or almost anyone, exhausts her. She’s lousy at remembering names. She cannot add or subtract. She hates having appointments in her diary and prefers to wear the same outfit every day. She’s a helpless iconoclast much prone to anger. She’s also distrustful, lazy, and easily hurt. She is not a team player. She prefers interrupting people to organising them, and cries if she doesn’t get her way. She fears she’s neglected everybody she knows, and vice versa – not to mention people she doesn’t know. She can’t stand protocol, committees, business hours, ceremonial occasions, and filling out forms. And she never wants to be carried through a crowd on a palanquin. Otherwise, the world’s her oyster! She has written seven novels, including Sweet Desserts (Guardian Fiction Prize) and Ducks, Newburyport (Goldsmiths Prize, James Tait Black Memorial Prize), and an illustrated book for adults, called Tom the Obscure. This is her first essay collection.