Susie Boyt

Author / Journalist

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Agent

Caroline Dawnay

Assistant

Eleanor Horn

EHorn@unitedagents.co.uk 02032140831

Biography

Susie Boyt was born in London in 1969 and was educated at St Catherine’s College Oxford and University College London where she received a distinction for her M.A in English and American literature.

Susie is the author of five novels and a memoir, My Judy Garland Life.

In addition to Susie’s weekly column in the Financial Times, she regularly reviews books and writes features for publications, ranging from the London Review of Books to Tatler.

She is the School of Life’s ‘expert’ on mourning and grief and works as a bereavement counsellor for Cruse Bereavement Care

She lives in London with her family.

Latest publication:

The Small Hours, Little Brown, 01 Nov 12
A wonderful and startling novel about the havoc and pain, healing and love that comes with growing up in a family. Like A.L. Kennedy and Ali Smith, Susie Boyt is an exquisite writer, thoughtful and truly original.

Harriet Mansfield, brave, wry and handsome, is determined to triumph no matter what. With a decade of therapy under her belt and a new large inheritance, it seems there is nothing she cannot achieve.

So she decides to open the school of her dreams. To her precious little girls, rich in everything but care, she vows to provide the happiest childhoods in the world. For everyone knows that early years passed in delightful ways can set you up for life.

But can this ambitious new departure spill some retrospective sweetness onto Harriet’s own harsh beginnings, or better still cancel them out altogether? Will the family she’s estranged from ever grant her the recognition she craves?

Written with deep psychological insight and coal-black humour The Small Hours is a stunning meditation on love, self-love and forgiveness, and their shadowy opposites.

Reviews for My Judy Garland Life:

‘this wonderfully clever book gives its whole self, flings its arms out in the rainy street like a wonderful diva. Brava’ Ali Smith, The Times

‘You’d need the heart of a tin man not to be moved’ Paul Burston, Independent on Sunday

‘Part memoir, part biography, part astute cultural analysis and altogether charming, this is a magical look at the roles of hero and hero worshipper’ Marie Claire

‘Highly original, meditative blend of biography and memoir’ London Paper

‘A delightfully singular memoir… a joy to read’ Financial Times

Publications

Fiction

Publication Details Notes

ONLY HUMAN 2004 Headline Review

Marjorie Hemming inhabits a planet where reconciliation is all. A respected counsellor at the Wellbeck Centre for Marital Relations, she regularly claws back couples from the bleakest brinks. In fact, for the troubled souls who brave her modest consulting room, there is nothing she would not do.

THE LAST HOPE OF GIRLS 2001 Headline Review

Newly installed as resident caretaker of four half-derelict West End flats, Martha Brazil can scarcely believe her luck. After years of stuffy bedsits and suburban flatshares, the future seems electric with the promise of renovation and repair. Surely anything might happen to a girl who embraces it with gusto…

THE CHARACTERS OF LOVE 1996 Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Nell’s father was absent for the first 13 years of her life and, when he did appear, he only offered a conditional relationship. So, at 17, Nell is still looking for a father figure. She meets him in the form of Bill Marnie and falls head over heels in love with him, but their joy does not last.

THE NORMAL MAN 1995 Weidenfeld & Nicolson

The Normal Man spans one eventful weekend in the life of Janey March. A freak accident at a house warming party draws in all her conflicting obsessions, and amongst the sons and the memories, the cakes and the blood, she is forced again to think about the peculiarities of her family and her taste in men.