'The night Eva shared a smile with Pat, something started. Two weeks later, lying together in her bed, Pat said, 'You can't live your life saying you'll get around to doing something you know will make you happy. You just have to do it.'
'Eva didn't know how devastating those words would turn out to be. Pat dies and the aftershock leaves Eva on unsteady ground. She is pregnant. And she has to make a choice. Suddenly, the world that she at times already questioned, her career, her roommates and friends, and life in the inner-city are all even harder to navigate. Her best friends, Sarah and Annie, are also dealing with the shifts and changes of their late twenties, and each of them will at times let the others down.
'Small Joys of Real Life is a poignant and unpredictable novel from an exciting new literary talent about how the life you have can change in an instant. It's about friendship, desire, loss and growing up to accept that all you can do is be in the moment and look to find the joys in between.' (Publication summary)
'Friendship, desire, and growing up. In her debut novel, Allee Richard’s accepts that sometimes all you can do is be in the moment and appreciate the small joys in life.'
'One of the hardest challenges for a novelist is to write a story for adults from the point of view of a child. In 1847, Charlotte Brontë set the bar high with Jane Eyre, the first novel to achieve this. The story ends when Jane is a woman but commences with the child Jane’s perspective. So effective for readers was Brontë’s ground-breaking feat that Charles Dickens decided to write Great Expectations in the voice of the child Pip, after just hearing about Jane Eyre, even before reading it.' (Introduction)
'The soft pastel-pink cover of Allee Richards’ debut novel features a helmetless young woman in a short green dress riding a pushbike, her dark hair blowing in the breeze. From her carefree demeanour and the title, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is a self-help book full of hokey affirmations about finding beauty in ephemeral moments. Small Joys of Real Life is, however, more nuanced and complex than this first impression might suggest.' (Introduction)
'The soft pastel-pink cover of Allee Richards’ debut novel features a helmetless young woman in a short green dress riding a pushbike, her dark hair blowing in the breeze. From her carefree demeanour and the title, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is a self-help book full of hokey affirmations about finding beauty in ephemeral moments. Small Joys of Real Life is, however, more nuanced and complex than this first impression might suggest.' (Introduction)
'One of the hardest challenges for a novelist is to write a story for adults from the point of view of a child. In 1847, Charlotte Brontë set the bar high with Jane Eyre, the first novel to achieve this. The story ends when Jane is a woman but commences with the child Jane’s perspective. So effective for readers was Brontë’s ground-breaking feat that Charles Dickens decided to write Great Expectations in the voice of the child Pip, after just hearing about Jane Eyre, even before reading it.' (Introduction)
'Friendship, desire, and growing up. In her debut novel, Allee Richard’s accepts that sometimes all you can do is be in the moment and appreciate the small joys in life.'
