followed by her solo show, Dominoes, which toured the South East and London. She completed the Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab program, and her most recent full-length play, The Soon Life, was shortlisted and highly commended for the Tony Craze Award as well as being longlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award. McIntosh won a place on the inaugural Tamasha x Hachette creative writing program and was selected for Penguin’s WriteNow program.
Dominoes is her debut novel.
At Electric Lit McIntosh tagged seven novels "about women who, at any one time, have had their doubts about who they are and who they present themselves to the world as." One title on the list:
Temper by Phoebe WalkerRead about the other entries on the list.
Purpose and identity are often inextricably linked to place for many women. We feel this in almost every line of Phoebe Walker’s debut. Infused with her characteristic poetic imagery and keenly observant eye for the world around her, she gives us yet another unnamed narrator (a theme worthy of a reading list of its own!) who has left London on the coat tails of her corporate boyfriend and his new job. Being a freelance writer, she has the freedom to work from anywhere, and the Netherlands, she reasons, is as good a place as any. But the promise of expat life, with its shiny, social media-ready exterior and the feeling of excitement in the first days and weeks, quickly fades. What our protagonist is left with is creeping isolation, loneliness and a lack of purpose. When she reluctantly befriends an untrustworthy fellow expat who has been shunned by everyone else who knows her out there, the narrator’s reflections on just how and exactly where to go about building a life for oneself in a big world, becomes all the more intriguing and absorbing.
--Marshal Zeringue
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