The Days of Judy B

This is a book for anyone who has ever felt their life careering out of control. Clever, touching, disturbing, it will take you from laughter to tears and back again.

“Surely the debut of the year. Heiney's voice has a stunning wit and assurance - A superb first novel”

The Times
Heiney's dazzlingly well-written debut - her prose has the kick and swagger of the young Martin Amis - reels you in with the promise of frothy fun, only to do a volte face into darker, more troubling territory. Time Out
One of the funniest, most profound and most affecting books I have ever read. It has literally blown me away.
Clever, with plenty of substance beneath the surface satire - and very well-written, not least considering that Rose Heiney is only 23. Daily Mail
When publishers' lists glitter with fools gold, it is reassuring to catch gleams of the real thing. The Times

Rose Heiney is 24 and lives in London, where she works as an actress and writer. She graduated from Oxford University in 2006. This is her first novel.

On paper, 23-year-old Judy Bishop is a successful journalist, the author of a first-person column in a Sunday newspaper, in which she documents the life of a fabulously social young professional: clothes, men, parties, laughs. In reality, she is a friendless depressive: living alone in Bethnal Green, addicted to Victoria sponge, wallowing in hard liquor and just about sustaining herself through a well-informed obsession with the golden age of musical theatre...With every week that passes, another exit is boarded up. Things have to change; and soon. Bracing herself to emerge from beneath her washed-out, single duvet, she gives herself 15 weeks in which to conduct the Great Overhaul, 15 weeks in which she can burst out into the functioning world in a flurry of men, wine, and song...And that's when things really begin to unravel. As Judy careers around London on a quest to change her life - from losing her virginity in a Novotel to frying her hair with domestic bleach - she finds herself plumbing new depths of degradation and despair. ..A stunningly accomplished debut from Rose Heiney, The Days of Judy B is clever, touching, disturbingly funny. This is a book for anyone who has ever felt their life teetering on the edge; it will take you from laughter to tears and back again - via the dark places of the soul where fear and insecurity lurk.

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