A collection that shows us ourselves as we truly are

***AN IRISH TIMES 2024 DEBUT WRITER TO LOOK OUT FOR***

Arresting and inventive SALLY ROONEY

Her writing feels so fresh PANDORA SYKES

Two teenage girls fixated on each other's bodies enter into a destructive competition; a woman's encounter with her ex forces her to reflect on the women's group that saved her; a couple's future is called into question after the damp expert they hire for their bathroom offers them free counselling; an older man's buried grief emerges during an altercation with a mother driving a 44; and over the course of a bitter winter a waitress lacks the money to fix an impacted tooth as the cracks begin to show in her precariously balanced life.

Free Therapy takes us into the inner lives of women and men who are versed in the language of therapy, possessed with the self-knowledge needed to change their lives, but finding themselves unwilling to doing so. As her characters try and fail to connect - via sex, friendship, screens and work - Rebecca Ivory explores desire in all its forms, revealing the ways in which we posture and present, and the softness and insecurities that lie beneath.

Perfectly observed, wry and illuminated by moments of sympathy and wisdom, Free Therapy shows us ourselves as we truly are.

I ate it up in two sittings SABA SAMS