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Shelf Life cover art

Shelf Life

By: Livia Franchini
Narrated by: Eleanor Yates, Sam Woolf, Seroca Davis, Daisy Badger, Holly Taylor
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Summary

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Shelf Life by Livia Franchini.

Launching an intelligent, perceptive new voice in fiction, Shelf Life is the exquisite, heart-wrenching story of a woman rebuilding herself on her own terms.

Ruth is 30 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.

And so she uses that list to tell her story. Starting with six eggs, and working through spaghetti and strawberries, and apples and tea bags, Ruth discovers that her identity has been crafted from the people she serves: her patients, her friends, and, most of all, her partner of 10 years. Without him, she needs to find out - with conditioner and single cream and a lot of sugar - who she is when she stands alone.

©2019 Livia Franchini (P)2019 Random House Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"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

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Goodish

This book jars a bit. It seems a bit like the author was set an exercise in using different writing styles.

Also isn't it well known that nobody wants to hear about other people's dreams?

However the bits that were written in a plain narrative style as opposed to interminable texts etc held my interest.

The story is about a bunch of sad and/or unpleasant characters living sad, pinched lives.

Not much happens and what does is grim-but I like that sort of thing so I'm not complaining-too much.

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