Lucy Ellmann Books in Order

Suzy Schwarz navigates a difficult relationship with her sister Fran, disappointing encounters with love, and grief for her parents. Food offers comfort as family memories and personal frustrations shape this novel about the expectations others impose on a life.

At a London art institute, Isabel's imagined romances contrast with her flatmate Pol's more direct approach to life. American academic Robert enters their orbit, bringing personal baggage and professional rivalries into a comedy of desire, disappointment, and intellectual pretension.

Reclusive Eloïse lives in an English cottage with her cats and cello, nursing grievances against modern life. American poet George struggles with an epic about ice hockey, while their loneliness and attachment complicate the prospect of coming together.

Unhappy with her marriage and place in the universe, Dot attempts to end her life, only to find that death offers no simple escape. A journey through the underworld and reincarnation turns her disappointments into a dark comedy.

Nurse Jen falls in love with the handsome doctor who employs her, despite a disastrous record of patient care. Their rural practice becomes the setting for a dark satire of medical incompetence, romantic fantasies, and judgments about women's bodies.

After slipping on a Manhattan street, plastic surgeon Harrison Hanafan receives help from an unusual stranger, Mimi. Their subsequent encounters develop into a romance that challenges his assumptions about women, beauty, professional life, and the possibilities of social change.

A publisher hires ginger farm cat Tom to tackle the mice invading its book-filled offices. He settles comfortably into the company's routines, but his enthusiasm for resting raises doubts about his suitability for the practical business of catching mice.

An Ohio mother bakes pies while her thoughts move among family worries, memories, everyday tasks, and national crises. Her sustained interior monologue connects private grief and embarrassment with fears about violence, environmental damage, and the state of American life.

These satirical essays examine everyday objects, social expectations, and political failures through Lucy Ellmann's personal arguments. Topics include environmental catastrophe, matriarchy, air travel, clothing, and literature, linking apparently small irritations with broader questions about how people organize their lives.