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Starred review from October 19, 2015
A woman is torn between her best friend and her fiancé in this delayed-coming-of-age novel filled with debauchery and friendship. Laura and Tyler live in squalor in Manchester. They're overeducated, underemployed, and devoted to excess even though their friends set aside the partying life years earlier. Now 32, Laura does the least amount of work she can get away with at her job and is similarly apathetic about writing Bacon, her novel about a priest who falls in love with a talking pig. She is engaged to Jim, a teetotaling classical pianist who is often on the road. If Jim acts as Laura's superegoâquietly condemning her over-indulgenceâTyler is all id, sort of like a younger version of Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous, and not all that quietly trying to sabotage Laura's upcoming wedding. Unsworth's writing is vividly vulgar, outrageously physical, and darkly funny. Portrayals of women behaving badly are often meant to be funny, but Tyler's aggressive self-destructiveness worries, even shocks, creating a memorable, deceptively poignant novel. Agent: Clare Conville, Conville and Walsh Literary Agency.

August 1, 2015
In Unsworth's (Hungry, the Stars and Everything, 2012) second novel, two women confront the end of their carefree, party-going 20s. Laura Joyce and Tyler Johnson have been inseparable since their early 20s. Within their apartment, they've cultivated the kind of female friendship that's closer to a unified existence, and they're as comfortable quoting Yeats to one another as they are drinking until the sun comes up. But when Laura, who works at a call center but dreams of becoming a writer, gets engaged to straight-laced classical pianist Jim, a shadow is thrown over their relationship. Jim has given up the lifestyle of drinking and partying, and as his career progresses, he encourages Laura to do the same. Unorthodox Tyler, however, maintains her belief that "Sharing your life with someone is like Marmite. It's FUCKING SHIT," and she holds fast to her friendship with Laura and their wild, drug-filled nights out. Real life intrudes as Laura's wedding draws closer, Tyler's sister has a baby, and the two debate some of life's bigger questions-what love, romance, and relationships really mean and whether growing up is inevitable. After arguments and a disastrous bar brawl drive a wedge between them, Laura is certain she can't keep up with Tyler forever, but can she let her go entirely? As Unsworth charts Laura's glittery nights out with Tyler and clashes with Jim, the book's constant succession of parties and hangovers can get repetitive, but surprisingly deep insights emerge in between. As she fights with Jim, Laura wants to accuse her fiance of losing his spontaneity but muses, "Hadn't I fallen for his fixedness, his pin-like regard?...Was that what happened: the things you fell in love with became the very things that repelled you, in the end?" While leveled at Jim, on a deeper level the question is also directed at Tyler and speaks to the book's moving examination of friendship and whether it can survive as time passes, people change, and the responsibilities of adulthood beckon. A deep, honest meditation on all the drama and intimacy of female friendships.

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November 1, 2015

Unsworth follows up her Betty Trask Award-winning debut, Hungry, the Stars and Everything, with a tale of female friendship. Wannabe novelist Laura focuses most of her energies on best friend Tyler, a let's-party-until-we-drop sort with whom she consumes prodigious quantities of alcohol. With all their wild ways, there's barely room for Jim, the classical pianist Laura plans to marry. (There's an unlikely couple.) Jim has stopped drinking for the sake of his career and wants Laura to get a grip, but this is not a novel of one young woman's finding the light. At the bittersweet end, Laura is true to herself. VERDICT Darkly hilarious, though it does sober up, this novel is a twentysomething cri de coeur that enlightens even as it exasperates.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2015
Unsworth's second novel, following Hungry the Stars and Everything (2011), centers on the misadventures of two young women in Manchester. At 32, Laura is making a sincere effort to grow up. She is engaged to Jim, a smoldering concert pianist, and is gamely trying to plan their wedding. Her roommate and best friend, Tyler, has no such aspirations: her nights are drink and drug-fueled adventures, and she has no wish to lose her partner in crime to the conventions of marriage and (the horror!) motherhood. The divide between the two halves of Laura's life only grows wider when Jim gives up drinking altogether, and Tyler fans the flames of Laura's reluctant attraction to a flirtatious academic who happens to be an expert on Laura's favorite poet, Yeats. Told in Laura's frank voice, Unsworth's novel is a frenzied ride, but at its core it's a millennial coming-of-age tale that will speak to many young women and young men who aren't quite ready to give up their wild, carefree ways for a life of adult responsibility.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)