High Tide

Whip-smart, slyly heartbreaking, and I felt the truth of it in my bones. Franchini dissects ideas of love, dating and identity in a way that feels both ruthless and humane. I loved it.

This is a book that should not be missed: a beautifully executed contribution to the discussion of toxic masculine behaviour and the patterns of socialisation that enable it.

Franchini's voice is sharp and clever and her debut novel tells us truths about how and why we love.

Quirky, awkward and fresh... There’s a confidence to the wilful eccentricities of her writing.

A quirky, funny, poignant book which shimmers with originality. I loved it.

Livia Franchini is a writer and translator from Tuscany, Italy. Her recent publications include the novel Shelf Life (Doubleday, 2019), her English-language translation of Lorenza Mazzetti’s The Sky Is Falling (Another Gaze, 2023), and the anthology Too Little / Too Hard: Writers on the Intersections of Work, Time and Value, co-edited with Lucy Mercer (Peninsula Press, 2026). Livia is Lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, where she also coordinates The Goldsmiths Prize. She lives in south east London.

Summer, 1992. Peter, a promising young artist, vanishes off the coast of Tuscany. Ten days later, his body washes ashore, bloated and unrecognisable. For one sweltering summer, his death grips the public imagination, before fading into the haze of nineties lore. 
 
Thirty years on, Peter’s widow, Marie, has become infamous in her own right. A cult but reclusive horror writer, her novels are celebrated for their dark brilliance – but no one knows the woman behind the pen name, or the memories she’s spent a lifetime suppressing. 
 
When a retrospective of Peter’s work is announced at a prestigious London gallery, an old friend resurfaces who seems determined to drag Marie from the shadows and unmask her. Drawn back to Italy, she feels the past begin to stir: the heat, the secrets, the girl she once was. What does she owe the dead – and how far will she go to protect the living?

Livia Franchini

Shelf Life is whip-smart, slyly heartbreaking, and I felt the truth of it in my bones. Franchini dissects ideas of love, dating and identity in a way that feels both ruthless and humane. I loved it.

Sophie Mackintosh, author of 'The Water Cure'

This is a beautiful novel. The scene with the mother and the chicken is one of the most rigorous, affecting, strange scenes I have read in a while and it's still haunting me. It was funny, and sad, and I devoured it. It reminded me of Convenience Store Woman. I absolutely loved it.

Susannah Dickey, author of 'Tennis Lessons'

Livia Franchini has delivered an impressive, Sally Rooney-esque debut novel.

Shelf Life is so intimate. It's like riding the bus home with a friend as she confides her secret hopes and fears. Each raw emotion is carefully delivered. Franchini has created a protagonist who feels achingly real. I wanted to cancel all my plans and just read this book.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of 'Harmless Like You'

Shelf Life feels like a Bridget Jones for cynical souls. Franchini captures perfectly the mundane devastation of heartbreak and the utter impossibility of knowing and being known. Sweet, funny, odd and achingly perceptive, this seemingly small tale asks some terrifyingly big questions about love, loss, identity and existence. I couldn’t put it down.

Natasha Bell, author of 'His Perfect Wife'

A novel that explores the precarities, fragilities and tendernesses of modern life — it scintillates.

Eley Williams, author of 'Attrib: and other stories'

Shelf Life is dark and disarming. It wryly explores hunger and denial and the play between pleasure and power in an honest portrayal of the complexities of desire. Franchini's voice is sharp and clever and her debut novel tells us truths about how and why we love.

Shelf Life is a truly unique read; a book so thoughtfully and articulately written it draws the reader deep into the painful heart of a fracturing relationship. Ruth, the novel's central character is crafted in such a believable way, I felt every one of her disappointments keenly. I was rooting for her throughout. By the final page I felt like we'd been through something monumental together.

Jan Carson, author of 'The Fire Starters'

I absolutely loved this - really moving and powerful

Structured around a shopping list, the non-linear narrative is as droll as it is disarming. The playful form gives a new, distinctly millennial shape to perennial struggles of love and dating.

Quirky, awkward and fresh . . . Slyly moving [and] vividly written . . . There’s a confidence to the wilful eccentricities of her writing that reminded me of Miranda July, as well as a fresh voice that’s highly readable.

‘This intriguing debut ends up weirder and more structurally adventurous than its chattily plain-spoken opening leads us to expect . . . [with] a provocative climax to an unpredictable exploration of 21st-century sexual mores’

An eccentric and lingering snapshot of millennial womanhood . . . Though unsettling at times, the unrelenting rawness of Shelf Life forms its brilliance. The novel is a bold and uncompromising addition to experimental women’s writing, exposing truths at every turn.

A picture of a woman defined by those she serves [that] weaves in challenging questions about womanhood

The real heart of the novel [is] how people must learn to stand alone - and how the apparently meek are often most resilient.

'Shelf Life is whip-smart, slyly heartbreaking, and I felt the truth of it in my bones.’ Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure 
 
Ruth is thirty years old. She works as a nurse in a care home and her fiancé has just broken up with her. The only thing she has left of him is their shopping list for the upcoming week. 
 
Starting with six eggs, and working through spaghetti and strawberries, apples and tea bags, this inventive novel builds a picture of a woman defined by the people she serves; her patients, her friends, and, most of all, her partner of ten years. Without him, Ruth needs to find out – with conditioner and single cream and a lot of sugar – who she is when she stands alone. 
 
With her fresh unpredictable style, Franchini skewers modern relationships and toxic masculinity, moving effortlessly between humour and heartbreak to tell the story of a woman rebuilding herself on her own terms.

Livia Franchini

Praise for Shelf Life

Shelf Life is whip-smart, slyly heartbreaking, and I felt the truth of it in my bones. Franchini dissects ideas of love, dating and identity in a way that feels both ruthless and humane. I loved it. ...

This is a beautiful novel. The scene with the mother and the chicken is one of the most rigorous, affecting, strange scenes I have read in a while and it's still haunting me. It was funny, and sad, and I devo ...

Livia Franchini has delivered an impressive, Sally Rooney-esque debut novel.

Shelf Life is whip-smart, slyly heartbreaking, and I felt the truth of it in my bones. Franchini dissects ideas of love, dating and identity in a way that feels both ruthless and humane. I loved it. ...

This is a beautiful novel. The scene with the mother and the chicken is one of the most rigorous, affecting, strange scenes I have read in a while and it's still haunting me. It was funny, and sad, and I devo ...

Livia Franchini has delivered an impressive, Sally Rooney-esque debut novel.

Shelf Life is whip-smart, slyly heartbreaking, and I felt the truth of it in my bones. Franchini dissects ideas of love, dating and identity in a way that feels both ruthless and humane. I loved it. ...

This is a beautiful novel. The scene with the mother and the chicken is one of the most rigorous, affecting, strange scenes I have read in a while and it's still haunting me. It was funny, and sad, and I devo ...

Livia Franchini has delivered an impressive, Sally Rooney-esque debut novel.

Books by Livia Franchini

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