Bellies
‘A beautiful love story’ Irish Times
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Discover the beautiful coming-of-age story about falling in-and-out of love, brimming with humour and heartbreak.
'Smart, hilarious and deeply moving' Elliot Page, author of Pageboy
'Thoughtful, seductive, and entirely engrossing - Bellies is already a classic' Bryan Washington, author of Memorial and Lot
'Bellies announces Nicola Dinan as a genuine literary talent, a gimlet-eyed cartographer of the human heart' Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti
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It begins as your typical boy meets boy.
Tom and Ming meet on a night out at university and fall hard for each other. It’s not long before they are planning a future and building a life.
Then Ming announces her intention to transition.
As Tom and Ming both face shifts in their relationship and confront the vastly different shapes their lives have taken, they must both ask if it is worth losing a part of themselves – or each other – to become the people they want to be.
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Praise for Bellies:
'Dinan's gift as a writer is her ability to make us feel - when her characters cry, we cry; when they laugh, we laugh; and everybody is changed by the end of this novel, including the reader. A beautiful love story and an exceptional debut.' - Irish Times
‘The most hotly anticipated novel of the summer’ - Harper's Bazaar
‘A tender, emotional exploration of gender and sexual identity’ - Marie Claire
‘Dizzyingly beautiful’ - Grazia
‘A poignant tale that explores the messy complexities of relationships, with recognisably imperfect characters at its core’ - Sunday Times Style
‘Both deeply touching and wickedly witty’ - Daily Mail
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
It’s not difficult to see why Tom and Ming love each other. Their wit, warmth and sexiness are all captured beautifully in Bellies. Yet it’s not difficult to understand how they might hurt each other, either—life is complicated, they’re young people still growing into themselves, and the novel, while making the reader care for and empathise with both of them, avoids beautifying anyone. We meet the couple as university students, but follow them into the wider world; soon after they leave, Ming comes out as trans, and the book follows the changes in them as individuals and in their relationship. It is moving, unflinching, generous, and often a huge amount of fun (Nicola Dinan’s ability to put on the page romantic chemistry, and for that matter platonic chemistry, is uncanny). Bellies illustrates the many reasons why living honestly and being vulnerable with others is hard, but makes a strong case for it all the same.