Here’s the THING: Lucy Ellmann is extremely shy. She’s so awkward and self-conscious that meeting strangers, or almost anyone, exhausts her. She’s lousy at remembering names. She cannot add or subtract. She hates having appointments in her diary and prefers to wear the same outfit every day. She’s a fretful iconoclast, much prone to anger. She’s also distrustful, lazy and easily hurt. She is not a team player. She prefers interrupt- ing people to organising them, and cries if she doesn’t get her way. She fears she’s neglected everybody she knows, and vice versa – not to mention people she doesn’t know. She can’t stand protocol, committees, business hours, ceremonial occasions, public performances and filling out forms. And she never wants to be carried through a crowd on a palanquin. Otherwise, the world’s her oyster!

She has written seven novels, including Sweet Desserts (Guardian Fiction Prize, 1988), Dot in the Universe, Mimi and Ducks, Newburyport (Goldsmiths Prize, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, 2019), and an illustrated book for adults, called Tom the Obscure. Born in the USA , she now lives in Scotland. This is her first book of essays.