Notes to Self

'I am afraid of being the disruptive woman. And of not being disruptive enough. I am afraid. But I am doing it anyway.'

In this dazzling debut, Emilie Pine speaks powerfully from her painful personal experience - on the emotional labour of caring for her alcoholic father, on the unspeakable grief of miscarriage and infertility, on the social taboos around menstrual blood and female pain, on the ways young women use their own bodies as a weapon against themselves. Courageous, humane and uncompromising, devastatingly poignant and yet never self-pitying, these pieces investigate and challenge society's assumptions around pain, strength, resilience and identity, ultimately embracing joy and hope in the business of living.

An astonishingly fine book

Dublin Review of Books

About Emilie Pine

Emilie Pine is a writer and academic based in Dublin. Her first collection of personal essays, Notes to Self, won the Butler Literary Award, the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year Award, and Irish Book of the Year 2018. She wrote the original script of the critically-acclaimed play Good Sex, and is the author of the novel Ruth & Pen, which won the 2022 Kate O’Brien First Fiction Award. Her work has been translated into 17 languages.
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Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9780241986233
  • Length: 192 pages
  • Price: £4.99
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