Hey Yeah Right Get A Life
  • Published: 15 July 2001
  • ISBN: 9780099284222
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $30.00

Hey Yeah Right Get A Life

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EBook
4 Jan 2011
Paperback
15 Jul 2001
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'There are short story writers who render the genre mere snipped-up sections of prose, the poor relation of the novel; and then there are those, like Simpson, who elevate it to an art form all of its own, who make you see its point' Maggie O'Farrell

Helen Simpson's third collection is a bold, honest exploration of the trials and the rewards of motherhood.

‘Her stories are - for those who, like me, recognise the truth in every word - like a reprieve... Sharp, poetic and marvellously witty’ Kate Kellaway, Observer

Here are tales of a highflyer stuck at an interminable Burns Night celebration, increasingly aware of the babysitter waiting for her at home; an exhausted mother longing for adult conversation but whose son unwittingly precludes it; and a teenage girl whose fraught encounter with a harried mum of one brings newfound appreciation for her own capable mother of four. Most strikingly of all we meet Dorrie, whose efforts to calm her tinderbox of a family leave her struggling to contain her own emotions.

Hey Yeah Right Get a Life is a singular achievement: relatable, perceptive and utterly poignant.

‘It's a brilliant, painful, funny and courageous book’ Esther Freud, Guardian
  • Published: 15 July 2001
  • ISBN: 9780099284222
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $30.00
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About the author

Helen Simpson

Helen Simpson's sixth short-story collection, Cockfosters, follows Four Bare Legs in a Bed (1990), Dear George (1995), Hey Yeah Right Get a Life (2000), Constitutional (2005) and In-Flight Entertainment (2010). A Bunch of Fives: Selected Stories (2012) includes five stories from each of her first five collections. She has received the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Hawthornden Prize and the E.M.Forster Award. She lives in London.

portrait photo of Helen Simpson

Also by Helen Simpson

The Ritz London Book Of Afternoon Tea
Motherhood
Cockfosters
A Bunch of Fives
In-Flight Entertainment
Constitutional
Dear George and Other Stories
See all

Praise for Hey Yeah Right Get A Life

It's a brilliant, painful, funny and courageous book

Esther Freud, Guardian

Simply tremendous... She is a witch, with the surest hand in contemporary fiction

Philip Hensher, Spectator

Her limpid, chaste, luscious fiction describes real lives

John Lancaster, Daily Telegraph

Her stories are - for those who, like me, recognise the truth in every word - like a reprieve... Sharp, poetic and marvellously witty

Kate Kellaway, Observer

Motherhood has long been a subscription-only sort of subject. Helen Simpson has found a way to tell it, and I hope that people beyond the constituency margins are listening

Rachel Cusk, Evening Standard