Promotional Information

From an explosive new literary talent, a searing, moving memoir of family, adolescence and sexuality.

About the Author

Yrsa Daley-Ward is a writer and poet of mixed Jamaican and Nigerian heritage and is the author of The How, bone and The Terrible, the winner of the PEN Ackerley Prize. She splits her time between Brooklyn and London.

Reviews

Elegant, daring, profound - confirms her abundant talent as a writer
*Observer*

Beautiful and harrowing . . . Daley-Ward writes with disarming honesty
*Vogue*

A major literary talent . . . speaks about the power and powerlessness that young women are subject to in a wholly fresh, clear-eyed way . . . you'll find it hard to come away from The Terrible without a stab of recognition in your chest
*Stylist*

Daley-Ward explores the connection between raw emotion and the mechanics of language with more wildness and tenacity than ever
*Dazed*

A rare combination of literary brilliance, originality of voice and a narrative that commands you to keep going until you've reached the last page . . . her prose is invigorating, razor-sharp and moves at the speed of light . . . Yrsa Daley-Ward is an explosive new talent and this book should not be missed
*Evening Standard*

The Terrible's raw yet lilting prose draws the reader in at once. Unpredictable shifts in form and structure - from prose to poetry and script - are refreshingly disorientating. This is both a defiant book and a defiantly inventive one.
*The Times Literary Supplement*

Daley-Ward is a stylish writer, as well as an unusual voice . . . she has a knack for distilling wild emotions into precise imagery, for selecting insightful impressions.
*Sunday Times*

Daley-Ward's beautiful prose wrapped its hands around my neck - I found myself doing stupid things like walking through New York at rush hour with my nose buried in her book.
*The New York Times*

The Terrible is a lyrical piece of writing that oscillates between prose and poetry . . . Daley-Ward's lines land like dandelion spores, these weightless things that are somehow simultaneously profound
*Irish Times Magazine*

Daley-Ward has cooked a broth of dizzying emotions and touching moments down to a nuanced and taut account . . . there are so many flourishes of imagination and pathos here, that it's impossible not to get caught up in the torrential pace of the narrative . . .the result is one of the year's genuine must reads
*Irish Independent*

Daley-Ward combines beautifully crafted and deeply personal verse with impressive prose, bending the form of the memoir into her own genre
*Metro*

Daley-Ward is twenty-nine years old, but the events of her life more than justify the publication of this unflinching chronicle.
*The Times Literary Supplement*

Daley-Ward is twenty-nine years old, but the events of her life more than justify the publication of this unflinching chronicle.
*The Times Literary Supplement*