A Financial Times Poetry Book of the Year 2024
 
Caroline Bird's new poems show us the ambush of real life that occurs in the stillness after the happy ending.
 
This is a collection about marriage, lesbian parenthood, addiction and recovery in which a recurring dream is playing out: a world where mums impale themselves on pogo-sticks, serial killers rattle around in basements, baby monitors are haunted by someone else's baby and, through it all, love stays and stays like a stationary rollercoaster that turns out to be the scariest, most thrilling ride in the amusement park.
 
 Her editor welcomed the book in these terms:
 
'It is bleak, repellent and hilarious in an American Psycho-ish way. Hectic and vivid.' 
 
'Vegetable crisps. The words yawn like a black hole, sucking my eyes backwards into my head until I see my own brain glowing like a radioactive cauliflower.'