Elaine Kraf – författare

‘A cult classic … A high and a comedown at once – a paroxysm of sex and booze and, above all, colour … wryly funny … it is also devastating’ The New YorkerAn unforgettable portrait of a smart, sensitive, yet deeply troubled young woman fighting to live on her own terms‘I don’t need LSD for things to look pretty.’Ellen is an artist living alone on New York in the 1970s. She is beset by irritating ex-boyfriends, paint pigment choices, and, occasionally, by ‘radiances’ – episodes of joyous, reckless unreality during which she becomes Princess Esmerelda, a brightly-dressed star ruling over her kingdom of West 72nd Street. Yet there are those around her, particularly the men in her life, who are threatened by this incarnation, and wish to curtail the giddy freedom it brings her. A rhapsodic work of exuberant invention and deadpan humour, The Princess of 72nd Street sees female liberation and mental health through new eyes.With an Introduction by Melissa Broder‘One of literature’s hidden gems … demands a place on your bookshelf right next to Plath and Ditlevsen’ Sarah Rose Etter

A haunting novel exploring a mother’s fierce love for her disabled son as she grapples with her own mental health, by the author of the feminist cult classic The Princess of 72nd Street‘Funny, disarming and frequently ruthless’ The New York TimesClarence cannot see very well. He has seizures. He knows the word ‘tangerine’ but has forgotten the word ‘Mommy’. For Clarence’s mother, life revolves around her young son; she takes him to see specialists, protects him from the cruelty of other children, loves him fiercely. But she has her own struggles. Her sanity is precarious and fractured. When her mental health reaches breaking point, she is forced to decide between Clarence’s well-being and her own.Told through bright fragments of memories, I Am Clarence is a piercing journey into one woman’s mind, which asks, how much can a mother sacrifice for her child, and survive?With an introduction by Sarah Manguso.