GOODLORD
I had to wait, input a five-digit code sent to me via text.
When it came through it was:
00000 which seems insane.
I stared at it for more than my allotted minutes.
How is it that I found myself with all those holes?
A row of ohs. Disgusting.
No, I can't go on.
I won't, Ava. Do you watch porn?
Asked by letting agent, Ava, to make an account with the ominous sounding property technology 'Goodlord', our narrator launches into a breathless and rage fuelled reply that swings wildly between anecdotes of chaotic house-shares, grubby university halls, the claustrophobic school days that haunt her still, her various underpaid exploitative jobs at pubs and restaurants, relationships and sexual encounters both troubling and ecstatic, and an artists' residency that offers her the space she craves but demands a complicated transaction in return.
Written in sharp, unflinching prose, GOODLORD exposes the grinding inequalities of modern life. It is a blistering exploration of what it means to live in a world where everything, including your dignity, comes with a price tag.
Shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best Collection
The Times ‘Breakthrough Artist’ Poetry Nominee for the Sky Arts Awards
Longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize
Reviews
A dazzling treat of a book, genuinely inventive, spiky and funny.
It's Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground reimaged for the renting generation
As compelling as any thriller
I urge you to read Ella Frears' wild and dark new book
A dark, addictive and deceptively erudite read
All the hot women I know have Ella Frears on their bedside tables.
A witty, indignant and poignant look at the way our desire for a place to call home has been misshapen and distorted by the morbid pathologies of the market
Frears is a master joke teller and GOODLORD is funny as hell, unceasingly bawdy and oftentimes candid…
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