Lucy Ellmann has published seven novels: Sweet Desserts (winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize), Varying Degrees of Hopelessness, Man or Mango? A Lament, Dot in the Universe, Doctors & Nurses, Mim, and, in 2019, Ducks, Newburyport (shortlisted for the Booker and winner of the Goldsmiths Prize).
Ellmann's first essay collection is Things Are Against Us.
At the Guardian she tagged ten "admirable examples of the fine tradition of being an awkward customer." One entry on the list:
Jude the Obscure by Thomas HardyRead about the other entries on the list.
I embarked on hardcore kvetching at the age of 13 when my family moved from Connecticut to Oxford, a city devoted to the status quo. Oxford was so flat, so sexless, so grim, and its inhabitants, I felt, were coldtowards me. My self-esteem took a plunge from which it’s never recovered. Even our dog was despised. Perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut about my negative attitude to the place. But Oxford would not have welcomed me, a dopey girl with an American drawl, whatever I did. It’s a snide, pitiless town that generates its own miasma of male exclusivity. Hardy nailed it here, detailing the prudishness, philistinism, snobbery and sexual inequality of Oxford – all the stuff that drives misfits to drink a lot of dry vermouth within days of arrival. As Sue says to Jude, “Christminster cares nothing for you, poor dear!”
Jude the Obscure is among four books that changed Elizabeth J. Church.
--Marshal Zeringue
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