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A refreshingly irreverent novel about art, desire, domesticity, freedom, and the intricacies of the twenty-first-century female experience, by the acclaimed writer Hannah Pittard.
Divorced and childless by choice, Hana P. has built a cozy life in Lexington, Kentucky, teaching at the university, living with her boyfriend (a fellow academic) and helping raise his pre-teen daughter. Her sister's sprawling family lives just across the street, and their long-divorced, deeply complicated parents have also recently moved to town.
One day, Hana learns that an unflattering version of herself will appear prominently―and soon―in her ex-husband's debut novel. For a week, her life continues largely unaffected by the news―she cooks, runs, teaches, entertains―but the morning after baking mac 'n' cheese from scratch for her nephew's sixth birthday, she wakes up changed. The contentment she's long enjoyed is gone. In its place: nothing. A remarkably ridiculous midlife crisis ensues, featuring a talking cat, a visit to the dean's office, a shadowy figure from the past, a Greek chorus of indignant students whose primary complaints concern Hana's autofictional narrative, and a game called Dead Body.
Steeped in the subtleties and strangeness of contemporary life, If You Love It, Let It Kill You is a deeply nuanced and disturbingly funny examination of memory, ownership, and artistic expression for readers of Miranda July's All Fours and Sigrid Nunez's The Friend.
"The writers here might be insufferable, but in Pittard's skillful hands, they can also be entertaining." —Publishers Weekly
"A wild romp of a novel that might have been more successful if the writer weren't still out for revenge." —Kirkus Reviews
"The author's ear for dialogue and her sense of absurdity carry the novel.... Pittard asks readers to consider the characters they are and who they love." ―Booklist
"A dishy work of autofiction that everyone will be talking about." ―The New York Times
"Hannah Pittard's zany work of autofiction questions the rules of creative writing―as well as the logic of life and love. Pluck any line and it's sure to be memorable." ―Shelf Awareness
"Hannah Pittard has always been so adept at delving into the interior, unafraid of what might reside there, able to create stories where the specificity of relationships and family and identity touch you in these unexpected ways. If You Love It, Let It Kill You asserts that it is 'neither a comedy nor a tragedy but something much worse: real life' but Pittard and these characters know better. Real life, the strangest place to reside, is where Pittard does the most incredible work." ―Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here
"Hannah Pittard's If You Love It, Let It Kill You is a masterclass in autofiction: incisive, hilarious, heartbreaking, and mercilessly candid. This novel, its narrator makes clear, is 'neither a comedy nor a tragedy but something much worse: real life.' If You Love It, Let It Kill You is Pittard's most impressive and innovative book yet." ―Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
This information about If You Love It, Let It Kill You was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Joe Wigdahl
Hannah Pittard is the author of four novels and a forthcoming memoir. Her books have been recommended by the New York Times; Chicago Tribune; O, The Oprah Magazine; Time; The Guardian; The Washington Post; Belletrist; Powell's Indie Subscription Club; The Indie Next List; and the Signed First Edition Club at Harvard Bookstore. She is a winner of the Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, a Macdowell Colony fellow, and a graduate of Deerfield Academy, the University of Chicago, and the University of Virginia. She also spent some time at St. John's College in Annapolis. She is a professor of English at the University of Kentucky and lives in Lexington with her boyfriend and step-daughter.
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