First published 2025
Hana P. has crafted a comfortable existence in Lexington, Kentucky. She teaches at the university, shares a home with her academic boyfriend and his pre-teen daughter, and lives across the street from her sister's busy household. Their complicated parents have recently relocated to town as well. When Hana discovers that her ex-husband plans to feature an unflattering portrayal of her in his upcoming debut novel, she initially shrugs off the news. Life proceeds normally for a week. She maintains her routine of cooking, running, teaching, and socializing. But the morning after she bakes homemade mac and cheese for her nephew's sixth birthday party, everything shifts. The satisfaction she has cultivated vanishes completely, replaced by an unsettling emptiness. What follows is an absurd midlife unraveling that includes conversations with a talking cat, disciplinary meetings with university administrators, an unexpected figure from her history, angry students who object to her autobiographical storytelling methods, and participation in a game called Dead Body. Pittard explores how external narratives about our lives can destabilize our internal sense of self.
Genres: literary-fiction, domestic-fiction, contemporary, adult-fiction, comedy, psychological-thriller
Vibes: absurdist, darkly-comedic, introspective, unsettling, witty
Tropes: external-vs-internal-conflict, identity-destabilization, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Lexington, Kentucky
Period: 21st-century, contemporary
304 pages · Paperback · Holt Paperbacks
Content warnings: depression, mental-illness