Jenn Ashworth Books

A genre-bending meditation on sickness, spirituality, creativity, and the redemptive powers of writing. Notes Made While Falling is both a genre-bending memoir and a cultural study of traumatized and sickened selves in fiction and film. It offers a fresh, visceral, and idiosyncratic perspective on creativity, spirituality, illness, and the limits of fiction itself. At its heart is a story of a disastrously traumatic childbirth, its long aftermath, and the out-of-time roots of both trauma and creativity in an extraordinary childhood. Moving from fairgrounds to Agatha Christie, from literary festivals to neuroscience and the Bible, from Chernobyl to King Lear, Ashworth takes us on a fantastic journey through familiar landscapes transformed through unexpected encounters and comic combinations. The everyday provides the ground for the macabre and the absurd, as the narration twists and stretches time. Hovering on the edge of madness, writing, it seems, might keep us sane—or might just allow us to keep on living. In Notes Made While Falling, Ashworth calls for a redefinition of the creative work of thinking, writing, teaching, and being, and she underlines the necessity of a fearlessly compassionate and empathic attention to vulnerability and fragility.

It's Friday in the Leeke household, but this is no ordinary Friday and the Leekes are a little unusual: they are Lancastrian Mormons, and this evening their son Gary will return from 2 years as a missionary in Salt Lake City. His mother is planning a celebratory dinner - with difficulty, since she's virtually housebound with an undiagnosed, embarrassing condition. What she doesn't realise is that the rest of the family - her meek husband, disturbed oldest son, and teenage daughter - have other plans for the evening, each involving drastic and irrevocable action.

A deeply affecting and unconventional love story, shot through with anger, black humour and grief.

Quando giunge da un torbido passato nella sua nuova casa in un tranquillo quartiere inglese, con la testa piena di propositi presi dai suoi libri sull’autostima, Annie pensa che a ventisette anni la sua vita sia finalmente iniziata. Si fissa subito su Neil, un giovane vicino di casa, scambiando la sua gentilezza per interesse sentimentale nonostante lui conviva felicemente con una modella di nome Lucy. Portando avanti il proprio programma di miglioramento personale, Annie organizza una catastrofica festa per conoscere i vicini di casa, si regala una nuova acconciatura e inizia a tormentare Lucy. Poco alla volta, però, emergono dettagli inquietanti del suo passato: dove sono finiti il suo ex marito e la loro figlioletta? Chi sono gli uomini che Annie ha incontrato attraverso la rivista erotica per amanti delle donne obese Abundance? È una vittima della solitudine e di un’infanzia infelice oppure una pericolosa sociopatica bugiarda e con gravi disturbi mentali? Con uno stile dalla sconvolgente lucidità Jenn Ashworth cattura il lettore e lo tiene avvinto dall’inizio alla fine, portandolo con sé attraverso una trama ricca tanto di eventi quanto di elucubrazioni e introspezioni, uno sguardo lucido come davvero pochi sul tortuoso cammino di quella che a conti fatti resta pur sempre la vita di una persona “normale”.

„Tief bewegend - aus der Feder einer wahren Erzählerin“ The Independent „Rau und düster - ein kompromissloses Porträt der Jugend“ Sunday Times „Ein höchst ungewöhnliches Vergnügen: ein literarischer Pageturner! Dies ist im besten Sinne ein unbequemes Buch“ Sunday Times „Ein kühler, schwarzhumoriger Roman mit einem surrealen Touch“ Grazia „Ein psychologischer Thriller der Extraklasse“ The Age Aufwühlender Roman über die düsteren Seiten des Erwachsenwerdens Ich sitze auf der Couch und schaue Nachrichten. Sie sind alle da: Chloes Eltern, der Bürgermeister und der ganze Rest. Am Weiher versammelt, für die Zeremonie. Zehn Jahre ist es jetzt her, dass Chloe und Carl ertrunken sind, und endlich soll es ein Mahnmal geben - einen bescheuerten Pavillon. Der Bürgermeister setzt zum Spatenstich an. Man sieht ihnen an, dass irgendwas nicht stimmt. Aber nur ich weiß sofort, dass der Bürgermeister einen Toten gefunden hat. Und nur ich weiß, wer es ist.