An Experiment in Leisure
  • Published: 3 June 2021
  • ISBN: 9781473582385
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

An Experiment in Leisure

Formats & editions
EBook
3 Jun 2021
Paperback
20 Sep 2022
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A sharp and witty debut novel that is at once a tender portrait of youth and an exploration of the emotional costs of social mobility, the possibilities of leaving and returning, the meanings of work and the ways a woman learns to love women

'I adore this book! ... An Experiment in Leisure shows us the burning, intense, messy beauty of youth and what it means to be alive' Maxine Peake

'Can I get a refund?' I asked the bus driver.
'You taking the piss, love?'

It's the eve of Brexit, and Grace is supposed to have what she wants. She's swapped West Yorkshire for north London, her accent carefully edited. Her friends drink beer out of artful tins. She makes flat whites for people with berets. She's found a psychoanalyst.

But this fantasy of metropolitan cool is turning out to be more costly than she thought and Grace faces complicated crises of identity, class, sexuality and geography.

Can she remember how to love? Can she find a way home?

'A dizzying yet powerful read' Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Checkout 19
  • Published: 3 June 2021
  • ISBN: 9781473582385
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304
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About the author

Anna Glendenning

Anna Glendenning was born and raised in Leeds. She has a BA in English from the University of Cambridge, an MA in Eighteenth-century Literature and Culture from Queen Mary, University of London, and currently works as a researcher and writer at Kew Gardens. She was formerly an editor with And Other Stories, where books under her wing made this year’s Man Booker International and Goldsmiths shortlists. In 2017 she was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize. She is twenty-eight and lives in South East London.

portrait photo of Anna Glendenning

Praise for An Experiment in Leisure

I adore this book! It's a short, sharp shot of oxygen straight to the soul. An exquisite mix of agonising pain and unbridled joy. An Experiment in Leisure shows us the burning, intense, messy beauty of youth and what it means to be alive

Maxine Peake

An Experiment in Leisure is an absolutely riveting novel that is both full of life and full of loneliness. Glendenning's words blaze and bounce across the page, brilliantly evoking the bizarre paradox that dogs early adulthood - namely, feeling intensely self-conscious despite possessing only the merest most nascent sense of having a self. A dizzying yet powerful read

Claire-Louise Bennett

A stunning, vivid and very funny debut about loss, family and the search for self-knowledge and a meaningful life. It's about the language of the heart, and how encountering those who speak a common tongue can shape the course of a life

Saskia Vogel

This is such a special book. With deeply joyful pace, and rhythm, I grew as obsessed with the prose itself as I did with the plot and characters. As things in the Big World seem to get more binary, An Experiment in Leisure plunders the grey area with wit and forgiveness - and that's exactly where I wanted to be

Tom Rasmussen

Remarkably assured... An attractive aspect of Glendenning's writing is the warmth with which she suffuses not just Grace but her whole cast of characters

Susannah Goldsbrough, Daily Telegraph

A deft exploration of millennial angst

Lucy Popescu, Tablet

Riveting...the words blaze and bounce across the page

Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Checkout 19

I adore this book... Shows us the burning, intense, messy beauty of youth

Maxine Peake

A stunning, vivid and very funny debut

Saskia Vogel, author of Permission

Remarkably assured... An attractive aspect of Glendenning's writing is the warmth with which she suffuses not just Grace but her whole cast of characters

Daily Telegraph

This is such a special book. With deeply joyful pace, and rhythm, I grew as obsessed with the prose itself as I did with the plot and characters. As things in the Big World seem to get more binary, An Experiment in Leisure plunders the grey area with wit and forgiveness - and that's exactly where I wanted to be

Tom Rasmussen, author of First Comes Love