How to Be Human

How to Be Human is an intriguing and subversive debut, an eerie tale that acts on the reader like a ghost story, charged with the power of the ignored and the suppressed. If we disdain our animal selves, they trail us, shadowing us at dawn and dusk. Paula Cocozza shows us that the line between the wilderness and the city is thin, easily transgressed; the ghost breathing in the thicket is our own wild nature.

Hilary Mantel

Eerie, original and subversive, How to be Human is a fascinating yet disturbing look at obsession, delusion and loneliness . . A thrilling exploration of what makes us human.

i

Intriguing and unsettling . . . the tricky, shifting substance of relationships is so insightfully drawn and constantly surprises.

Laura Barnett, author of THE VERSIONS OF US

Paula Cocozza's intense, fox-like powers of observation allow her to stalk the claims of territory and hidden wildness that energise this taut, shimmering novel.

Richard Beard, author of THE ACTS OF THE ASSASSINS

A singular love story of dominance and betrayal, this novel sets the tone for what will hopefully be a long and strange literary career.

Kirkus Reviews

There is much of [Ali] Smith’s playfulness in Paula Cocozza's enchanting debut . . . For all its suggestiveness and sensuality, [her] narrative is artfully restrained . . . In this startling debut, [she] seems to be saying that, no matter how lonely the city becomes, through an open window a mass of life is listening back.

Times Literary Supplement

A writer who is clearly unafraid of launching herself with a bang . . . Compelling . . . We are reminded of how close to the surface primal instincts can prowl.

Telegraph

A thrilling psychodrama . . . She brilliantly captures a sense of Hitchcockian, curtain-twitching intensity . . . Like the scent of a fox, truth and fact in How to Be Human start to evaporate. What is left behind is a pervasive sense that beneath the veneer of civility, something wilder is always lurking.

Economist

Nicely balanced between the serious and the lighter-hearted, Cocozza’s novel is an engaging read.

Sunday Times

Cocozza has a wonderful eye for detail, and her descriptions of the natural world are uncanny . . . She takes a big risk in narrating some sections from the point of view of the fox, and pulls it off with aplomb.

Guardian

Unsettling, the writing often vivid and rich.

Observer

Cocozza’s brilliant debut novel [is] a beguiling, highly inventive story about loneliness and finding a place in the world . . . A disturbing humour underpins Mary’s voice, a mesmerising mix of delusion and discernment . . . The momentum is achieved through Cocozza’s edgy, atmospheric writing.

Irish Times

Cocozza builds up equal measures of dread, danger and derangement as Mary brilliantly but bizarrely redefines what her future might look like.

Eithne Farry, Sunday Express

An atmospheric tale about safety, sanity and the complexity of relationships.

Big Issue in the North

Sharp, thoughtful . . . exhilarating . . . the plot slips from urban pastoral to tense thriller.

Newsweek

This brilliantly eerie novel is a powerful meditation on the blurred lines between sanity and delusion, the wild and so-called civilisation.

The Lady

In turn devastating, heart-warming and absurd, How to Be Human is an astonishing debut . . . At its core, it is a powerful and tender portrait of madness, loss and love.

i

Hypnotic . . . suspenseful . . . wonderfully sly and assured . . . Readers may come to realize they are on thrillingly unstable ground.

New York Times Book Review

[An] impressive debut

Irish Times, International Fiction Book of the Year

This dream-like debut from Cocozza paints a cleverly observed picture of wildness and loneliness, blurring the lines between human nature, normality and delusion.

Journey Magazine

[A] poignant and playful meditation on loss, love and loneliness. How To Be Human vibrates with originality, poetry and guts and I loved every strange, yet beautiful, page

Ali Land, author of Good Me Bad Me