A Kind of Intimacy is a sardonic and provocative look at self-help gone disastrously wrong. It presents a world in which the past never loosens its grip on the present and the famous exhortation to know thyself compels its characters to undertake a terrifying and potentially fatal journey.

Annie is grossly overweight and socially awkward but she’s determined to wipe the slate clean and make a new start. She moves into a new neighborhood bringing virtually nothing from her previous life with her. Then again, there is very little left of her previous life, for she has wiped the slate entirely clean. At least she thinks so.

Neil, Annie’s unsuspecting new neighbor, makes the mistake of being friendly—something Annie immediately interprets as infatuation on his part—setting in motion a chain of events that, despite her best laid plans, has Annie contemplating murder. Despite her rather too readily manifested homicidal instincts, however, she is thoroughly convinced that life has dealt her a foul hand, and that she is the real victim. As the pitiable persona she has so meticulously created begins to come apart at the seams, a bloody and disastrous finale seems inevitable.

Chosen by the UK’s leading bookseller as one of twelve “New Voices” for 2009, A Kind of Intimacy is Jenn Ashworth’s debut novel.

Jenn Ashworth
Jenn Ashworth studied English at Cambridge University and Creative Writing at Manchester. She works as the Head Librarian in a prison. In 2006 an extract from A Kind of Intimacy was shortlisted in a national competition entitled “The Enigma of Personality”.

• Sep 6 2010
  Bluestalking: "Forget eating, sleeping and the outside world. You won't be able to put this one down."
  
• Aug 7 2010
  Feminist Review: "An impressive first novel."
  
• Jul 21 2010
  The L Magazine: "Like all really great pieces of creepy writing, these passages only really get to you after you put the book down."
  
• Jul 8 2010
  The Boston Globe: "Ashworth draws a powerful portrait of a mad woman."
  
• Jun 18 2010
  Mostly Fiction: "A deliriously unique literary cocktail."
  
• Apr 20 2010
  Publishers Weekly recommends A Kind of Intimacy as "Pick of the Week"