Tracing the dark possibilities of best intentions gone awry, A KIND OF INTIMACY is a darkly comic novel about a dysfunctional young woman s life in the suburbs.
Annie is morbidly obese, lonely and hopeful. She narrates her own increasingly bizarre attempts to ingratiate herself with her new neighbours, learn from past mistakes and achieve a "certain kind of intimacy" with the boy next door. Though Annie struggles to repress a murky history of violence, secrets and sexual mishaps her past is never too far behind her, finally shattering her denial in a compelling and bloody climax. A quirky and darkly comic debut.
An intense and intriguing novel that never quite lets the reader get comfortable. It understands about the fuzzy boundary between the normal and the strange, and weaves them together in a gripping, ever-darkening narrative - Jenny Diski
who wouldn't kill for a comic gift like Jenn Ashworth's? - Guardian
a hugely readable debut novel...about the inability to know others and ourselves - Independent
evokes a damaged mind with the empathy and confidence of Ruth Rendell - The Times
extremely intense and powerfully intriguing - Waterstone's
An intense and intriguing novel that never quite lets the reader get comfortable. It understands about the fuzzy boundary between the normal and the strange, and weaves them together in a gripping, ever-darkening narrative - Jenny Diski
who wouldn't kill for a comic gift like Jenn Ashworth's? - Guardian
a hugely readable debut novel...about the inability to know others and ourselves - Independent
Jenn Ashworth was born in 1982 in Preston. She studied English at Cambridge and since then has gained an MA from Manchester University, trained as a librarian and run a prison library in Lancashire. She now lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Lancaster. Her first novel, A KIND OF INTIMACY, was published in 2009 and won a Betty Trask Award. Her second, COLD LIGHT, was published by Sceptre in 2011 and she was chosen by BBC's The Culture Show as one of the twelve Best New British Novelists. Her most recent novels are THE FRIDAY GOSPELS and FELL. She lives in Lancaster.