Shelf Life

About the Book

Brought to you by Penguin.
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'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

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 thirty 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 ten 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.

About the Author :
Livia Franchini is a writer and translator from Tuscany, Italy. Her recent publications include the novel Shelf Life, her English-language translation of Lorenza Mazzetti’s The Sky Is Falling, and the anthology Too Little / Too Hard: Writers on the Intersections of Work, Time and Value, co-edited with Lucy Mercer. Livia is Lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, where she also coordinates the Goldsmiths Prize. She lives in south east London.

Review :
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. This is a beautiful novel. The scene with the mother and the chicken is one of the most rigorous, affecting, strange scenes I have read in a while and it's still haunting me. It was funny, and sad, and I devoured it. It reminded me of Convenience Store Woman. I absolutely loved it. Livia Franchini has delivered an impressive, Sally Rooney-esque debut novel. Shelf Life is so intimate. It's like riding the bus home with a friend as she confides her secret hopes and fears. Each raw emotion is carefully delivered. Franchini has created a protagonist who feels achingly real. I wanted to cancel all my plans and just read this book. Shelf Life feels like a Bridget Jones for cynical souls. Franchini captures perfectly the mundane devastation of heartbreak and the utter impossibility of knowing and being known. Sweet, funny, odd and achingly perceptive, this seemingly small tale asks some terrifyingly big questions about love, loss, identity and existence. I couldn’t put it down. This is a book that should not be missed: a beautifully executed contribution to the discussion of toxic masculine behaviour and the patterns of socialisation that enable it. A novel that explores the precarities, fragilities and tendernesses of modern life — it scintillates. Shelf Life is dark and disarming. It wryly explores hunger and denial and the play between pleasure and power in an honest portrayal of the complexities of desire. Franchini's voice is sharp and clever and her debut novel tells us truths about how and why we love. Shelf Life is a truly unique read; a book so thoughtfully and articulately written it draws the reader deep into the painful heart of a fracturing relationship. Ruth, the novel's central character is crafted in such a believable way, I felt every one of her disappointments keenly. I was rooting for her throughout. By the final page I felt like we'd been through something monumental together. I absolutely loved this - really moving and powerful