Separation Anxiety
‘Exactly what I needed for a change of pace, funny and charming' - Judy Blume
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3.2 • 6 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
'Quirky, comic, honest' MARIAN KEYES
'Funny and charming' JUDY BLUME
'Wise and wonderful' ALICE HOFFMAN
'Written with such humour and heart' STYLIST
'A must read' RED
If you've ever wondered whether you love your dog more than your partner...
Life hasn't gone according to Judy's plan. Her career as a children's book author has taken a nose dive. Her teenage son Teddy treats her with a combination of embarrassment and indifference. She has 'separated' from her husband, Gary, who is living in the basement as they can't afford a divorce. And every day she has to write content for an uplifting self-help website while stalking her nemesis online - a creativity-lifestyle-coach guru with a social media following the size of Jupiter. All Judy wants is to not feel invisible. All she wants is to fill that space inside her. And when she decides to declutter the house, she hits on a radical solution...
Gleefully irreverent, tender, funny and uplifting, Separation Anxiety is a book filled with happiness and heart. A novel about the connections we make, the people we love and the joyful messiness of life.
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Praise for Separation Anxiety
'I adored this wise, funny, sad, quirky story...It's brilliant on the stories we tell ourselves and others in order to resist change, while beating ourselves up about not taking steps towards a happier future. Heartbreaking and life-affirming.' Daily Mail
'Separation Anxiety was exactly what I needed for a change of pace, funny and charming' - Judy Blume
'What a gem of a novel...It's laced with moments of self-doubt and marital mayhem, but also the many small daily acts of mercy and heroism that love inspires.' - Diane Ackerman
'I enjoyed Separation Anxiety very much... It has a real freshness of voice and though it is very poignant, several parts also made me laugh out loud' - Laura Barnett, author of The Versions of Us
'So sweetly funny, so very touching.' Sainsburys magazine
'My advice: Start reading and don't stop until you get to the last page of this wise and wonderful novel.' - Alice Hoffman
'[A] novel about stress, release, and the unlikely places we turn to for comfort in uncertain times' - Vogue
'Laura Zigman is able to home in on the most tender, revealing, exquisitely painful aspects of our relationships with others and with ourselves. And somehow she manages to come out the other end with hope.' - Chelsea Handler
'[Separation Anxiety] is compassionate and funny, articulating with gentle humor the terrible things that we're all grappling with. To steal a phrase from my daughter, it made me happy-cry.' - Laura Lippman
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Zigman (Animal Husbandry) charts a chaotic time in the life of an eccentric family in her winning and droll latest. Judy Vogel once wrote a successful kids' book, but she followed that up with two commercial flops and a case of writer's block. After running across her 13-year-old son Teddy's former baby sling while cleaning, Judy decides, on a whim, to start carrying the family dog against her chest. Having a warm body close to her eases the sadness of turning 50, Teddy's sudden drift away from her, and her recent separation from her husband, Gary. Unfortunately (and humorously), Judy and Gary can't afford to live apart, and cohabiting helps maintain a charade of normalcy (ostensibly for Teddy). Gary, who works as a self-described "snackologist" selling snacks online, makes the situation barely tenable with his debilitating anxiety, which he eases by smoking marijuana. Financial concerns are somewhat alleviated when they agree to host a troupe of "people puppets" adult performers who put on shows as puppets and a young couple also moves into the house, adding to the weirdness. But when someone begins defecating in the halls of Teddy's school and Teddy becomes a suspect, Judy wonders what effects her instability might be having on him. Snappy wit often offsets the sadness in this zany yet moving story. Zigman's dryly funny, inventive tale shows how hope can be found in midst of crisis. Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly referred to this book as the author's first.
