Press: Eat My Heart Out

"I really wish there were more novels like this these days."

- Stuart Hammond, books editor of Dazed and Confused, in The Quietus

"Pilger writes with such infectious rage... not since Martin Amis's early work can I remember a novel so exhilarated - and made so exhilarating - by its own sense of disgust."

- James Walton, The Daily Mail

"It's rare that a debut novel has the power to both make the reader laugh out loud and sigh with admiration, but Zoe Pilger's does just that."

- The Press Association

'Like a foul-mouthed Nancy Mitford for the Gawker generation, Zoe Pilger brings a ruthlessly sharp eye to our muddled and indulgent times. Eat My Heart Out is viciously, violently funny, and marks the arrival of a fearsome new voice in British fiction'

- Sam Byers, author of Idiopathy

"Super-smart, funny, and dark as midnight." - Marie Claire

"Pilger has been compared to Sheila Heti and Lena Dunham but she is funnier... I raced through Ann-Marie's escapades, often laughing out loud."

- Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Bookseller, Ones To Watch 2014

"Meet 2014's funniest new writer..." - Company

"So hooray for Zoe Pilger: her debut novel is about the London we know and love and it is dead smart and gloriously, mercilessly, snort-out-loud hilarious... Eat My Heart Out is the hipster Bridget Jones Diary it's OK to like. Only it's a lot, lot better than that sounds."

- Stuart Hammond, Dazed & Confused

"A post-feminist, female equivalent of Bret Easton Ellis, Zoe Pilger is definitely one to watch." - For Book's Sake

"it's refreshing to read a novelabout a strident and flawed young woman rather than a simpering heroine."

- Lucy Reber, Stylist Magazine, 4/5 stars

I recommended some of the books by female authors that

inspired Eat My Heart Out for The LRB Bookshop in

celebration of International Women's Day. Read it here

"Every sentence is in its place, every twist takes you along

with it in a great whoosh comparable to Angela Carter's

brilliant Wise Children. Pilger has a wonderfully relaxed style

that doesn't worry about whether you, the reader, are

enjoying yourself and would you like your cushions plumped

and is everything to your liking?"

Great review of Eat My Heart Out by Kat Brown. You can read it

here

"Read it to yourself with the measured pauses of Bill Hicks to

fully appreciate her dry wit. This is a beady-eyed, fantastically

funny satire of pop-cultural womanhood and the consumer-

driven pretentions that undercut modern hedonism."

Wonderful review of by the novelist Elizabeth Aaron. You can

read it here

"Anarchic and funny, Pilger's book has burned a space for you

to think."

I love this review of Eat My Heart Out by the novelist Jessie

Burton. You can read it here

"Farewell Bridget Jones." Sarah Hughes wrote a great piece on

literary bad girls, including Helen Walsh, Emma Jane Unsworth,

& Eat My Heart Out, for The Guardian. You can read it here

I wrote a piece on the idea of the bunny-boiler in Eat My

Heart Out & popular culture. You can read it here

"twisted visions with a spark of something moral"

Great analysis of Eat My Heart Out by Elle Shoel. Read it here

I love this analysis of Eat My Heart Out by Max Dunbar

Eat My Heart Out has been compared to Bret Easton Ellis, Kathy Acker, Lena Dunham’s Girls and early Amis, but transcends all these influences… Eat My Heart Out could be seen as a satire on the dark side of the sexual revolution - the normalisation of rape in casual discourse (Ann-Marie’s boss prior to a busy shift tells her ‘that I was going to get slammed hard from all directions tonight so I better fucking enjoy it’) and, more existentially, about the terrors of freedom: because freedom is scary, freedom to fail, freedom to fuck up. Pilger’s prose is like grease in the night air, a leaden drunken feeling after a day spent asleep, what Ann-Marie calls a ‘ghost of experience.’

Eat My Heart Out selected for The LRB Bookshop's 'For Lovers

& Others' Valentine's Day reading list

I wrote my reading recommendations for The Irish Times/

The Gloss Magazine:

The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark, The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter, and A Stranger On Earth: The Life and Work of Anna Kavan by Jeremy Reed

I wrote a short piece about cinema alter egos and Eat My

Heart Out for Electric Sheep. Read it here

Great 4/5 star review of Eat My Heart Out by Lucy Reber in

Stylist Magazine

"it's refreshing to read a novel about a

strident and flawed young woman rather than a simpering

heroine."

"It’s rare that a debut novel has the power to both make the reader

laugh out loud and sigh with admiration, but Zoe Pilger’s does just

that...."

Great review of Eat My Heart Out by The Press Association -

published in Northamptonshire Telegraph / Belfast Telegraph

/ East Anglia Daily Times / Hull Daily Mail / Leicester Mercury /

The Press (York) / Evening Express Aberdeen

"hell-bent on achieving Rimbaud's derangement of the

senses" Eat My Heart Out reviewed in The TLS

I am thrilled with this Daily Mail review of Eat My Heart Out.

The whole of chapter one of Eat My Heart Out is published

online by Dazed & Confused. You can read it here

I wrote a short piece about Generation Y for Red Magzine

Isabel Costello reviews Eat My Heart Out for The Literary Sofa:

The first thing I noticed about Ann-Marie, the first person narrator of Eat My Heart Out, was her unique voice. She is one of the most vibrant, engaging and individual characters I’ve come across in a long time.

Rosa Rankin-Gee reviews Eat My Heart Out for The Guardian:

"Zoe Pilger's debut novel is an anti-romance with an anti-heroine.

The pastel tongue on its cover made me think of a Swizzels Love

Heart, and this captures something of the book's flavour: like the

message-laden sweets, it fizzes with exploded declarations and

flicker-switch emotions."

Hannah Westland is my amazing editor and publisher at

Serpent's Tail. We wrote a joint piece about working

together for Isabel Costello's Literary Sofa. You can read it

here.

"Fresh, provocative and outrageous; we dare you to give it a go."

Eat My Heart Out reviewed in Red Magazine

I wrote The Book of A Lifetime column for The Independent on Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, which inspired Eat My Heart Out. You can read it here

I'm knocked out by books blog Utter Biblio's review of Eat My Heart Out:

"What can I say about Zoe Pilger? Well, I will start by saying that Eat My Heart Out is so brilliantly written that it hurts.... Pilger is plunging into the human psyche with the deftness of a brain surgeon but she wields a machete as her tool of the trade... Hyper intelligent, hilarious and written with a disgusting amount of skill; Eat My Heart Out will linger in your mind days after reading. And you’ll never look at Crème de Menthe the same way, again."

"Images of Amy Winehouse recur throughout the novel like a secular saint, Princess Di for Generation Y... If Gone Girl is noir, then Eat My Heart Out is a video nasty, provocative, cathartic and full of adrenaline-pumping thrills."

Great review of Eat My Heart Out by books blog Workshy Fop

I love this Bookcunt review of Eat My Heart Out:

"The story itself is fucking mad. Ann-Marie is up and down and a fantastic character to have at the centre. At times she is completely lucid and sensible, but at other times she is a fucking headcase. I don't know what it is exactly that is wrong with her, but I love her and I'm glad she's the way she is. She is a breath of fresh air.

The whole thing is completely batshit... funny, original, and tragic."

Eat My Heart Out compared to Brett Easton Ellis' The Rules of Attraction in Emerald Street's The Reading Room

"An enjoyable, grimly energetic debut." Eat My Heart Out reviewed in Diva magazine

Brilliant review of Eat My Heart Out by Stuart Hammond in Dazed & Confused:

"A post-feminist, female equivalent of Bret Easton Ellis, Zoe Pilger is definitely one to watch."

Great review of Eat My Heart Out in For Book's Sake

Eat My Heart Out was chosen as one of seven debut novels of 2014 by The Observer and I was interviewed here

"I just finished Zoe Pilger's debut Eat My Heart Out, which I got a massive kick out of from start to finish. It's about a London a lot of us will recognize (poverty, drugs, casual sex, poshos, squat raves, aimlessness, self-mutilation-on-the-bus) and it's narrated by a sassy and hilarious and completely charming young maniac called Ann-Marie. It's a glorious hoot from start to finish: I really wish there were more novels like this these days."

Great review of Eat My Heart Out by Dazed & Confused books editor Stuart Hammond in The Quietus

"Zoe Pilger's outrageous take on modern life packs a punch... Super-smart, funny, and dark as midnight."

Lovely review of Eat My Heart Out in Marie Claire

"We say this one is definitely one to pre-order before its release on January 30th... A romantic comedy without the romance - it'll be a winner!"

Eat My Heart Out listed in Company magazine's '50 Cool Things You Need To Know About 2014.'

Eat My Heart Out is included in Tim Adams' 2014 fiction preview in The Observer

Eat My Heart Out selected as one of For Book's Sake 10 women writers to look out for in 2014

Eat My Heart Out in Harper's Bazaar Talking Points

Chapter Three of Eat My Heart Out is published in The White Review No.9

The Bookerseller: Profile (1/11/13)

Felicity Wood from The Bookseller interviewed me about Eat My Heart Out and feminism. You can read the interview here.

The Bookseller: Eat My Heart Out / Ones To Watch (5/10/13)

Eat My Heart Out was selected for The Bookseller's January 2014 Ones To Watch: "Pilger has been compared to Sheila Heti and Lena Dunham but she is funnier... I raced through Ann-Marie's escapades, often laughing out loud." You can read the article here

The Bookseller: Eat My Heart Out / January News (5/10/13)

Cathy Rentzenbrink describes Eat My Heart Out as "shades of Sheila Heti but British and much funnier." You can the article here