So Lucky

From the author of Hild, a fierce and urgent autobiographical novel about a woman facing down a formidable foe.

So Lucky is the sharp, surprising new novel by Nicola Griffith — the profoundly personal and emphatically political story of a confident woman forced to confront an unnerving new reality when in the space of a single week her wife leaves her and she is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Mara Tagarelli is, professionally, the head of a multimillion-dollar AIDS foundation; personally, she is a committed martial artist. But her life has turned inside out like a sock. She can’t rely on family, her body is letting her down, and friends and colleagues are turning away — they treat her like a victim. She needs to break that narrative: build her own community, learn new strengths, and fight. But what do you do when you find out that the story you’ve been told, the story you’ve told yourself, is not true? How can you fight if you can’t trust your body? Who can you rely on if those around you don’t have your best interests at heart, and the systems designed to help do more harm than good? Mara makes a decision and acts, but her actions unleash monsters aimed squarely at the heart of her new community.

This is fiction from the front lines, incandescent and urgent, a narrative juggernaut that rips through sentiment to expose the savagery of America’s treatment of the disabled and chronically ill. But So Lucky also blazes with hope and a ferocious love of self, of the life that becomes possible when we stop believing lies.

"A narrative that at once informs, confronts, puzzles and engages. I have little doubt that readers who take it up will be rewarded." Lambda Literary

"This book is a body-slam of empowerment, a roar of frustration so sustained and compelling that it cannot be ignored... a tough, accomplished novel, a book that readers didn’t know they needed." The Arts Fuse

"A fresh and powerful novel and antidote to the sense of victimhood." Booklist

“So Lucky is somehow both a tense psychological thriller and a subtle character portrait, packed full of pleasure (so closely observed) and pain (so deep, so real). Nicola Griffith is an essential writer, and with this book she's given us something personal, political, and totally unputdownable.” Robin Sloan, author of Sourdough

Nicola Griffith is the multiple-award-winning author of several novels, including Hild, and a memoir. A native of Yorkshire, England — now a dual U.S./U.K. citizen — she is a onetime self-defense instructor who turned to writing full-time upon being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She lives with her wife, the writer Kelley Eskridge, in Seattle.

So Lucky is about a woman, Mara, realizing that she needs a community — other disabled people — that doesn't exist yet. It's about how she finds her people and then begins to discover and shape a new culture...

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