Hemingway famously said that ‘the best early training for a writer is an unhappy childhood’. Julia Kerninon, one of France’s most acclaimed new literary voices, tells an altogether different story in this poetic account of her pursuit, an inspiring, vibrant ode to reading, and writing.

‘The best early training for a writer is an unhappy childhood,’ Hemingway famously said. Julia Kerninon, one of France’s most acclaimed young novelists, tells an altogether different story in a poetic account of her pursuit. Her journey through her formative years entwines the French and Anglo-Saxon literary traditions, resulting in a vibrant ode to reading, and to writing as a space for discovery (as well as a ‘respectable occupation’), peppered with fine portraits of her disjointed yet loving family. From her native Brittany to the city of Shakespeare and Company, to a seaside café on the Atlantic coast, to Budapest and back, the author conjures a fluid, feminine answer to A Moveable Feast. On the 50th anniversary of the first Creative Writing Course in the UK, at UEA, this new book by a writer under 30 presents an old-school approach to authorship.