What a Shame: A dazzling debut about shame, grief, friendship and tarot

The idea of a curse was divisive, but the assertion that I had, for some time now, been 'laden with something dark' was disconcertingly unanimous. I wondered if this was something you also saw in me, if that was why you left. There is something wrong with Mathilda. She's still reeling from the blow of a gut-punch break up and grieving the death of a loved one. But that's not it. She's cried all her tears, mastered her crow pose and thrown out every last reminder of him. But that's not helping. Concerned that she isn't moving on, Mathilda's friends push her towards a series of increasingly unorthodox remedies. Until the seams of herself begin to come undone. Tender, unflinching and blisteringly funny, What a Shame glitters with rage and heartbreak, and offers up the joy of self-acceptance through an extraordinary rite of passage to overcome the prickly heat of female shame. 'absorbing And Clever, I Fell In Love With Mathilda' - Cathy Rentzenbrink There's Something Wrong With Mathilda Manning, And It's Not Just That She's Been Wearing The Same Pair Of Black Dungarees For Three Months Straight Or That She's Once Again Sleeping With The Deeply Inappropriate Freddie. Cast Into The Grief Of A Brutal Break Up And The Death Of Her Father, She's Not Moving On. Her Friends Insist She's Cursed, Flinging Her Towards Tarot, Cleansing Baths, And More Extreme Spiritual Practices In A Quest For Redemption. But Buried Memories Won't Stay That Way Forever, It's Time Mathilda Faces Up To Her Past . . . With blistering humour reminiscent of Emma Jane Unsworth and the raw vulnerability of I May Destroy You, What a Shame offers a powerful reading experience like no other - a book about female shame that will resonate with any woman who has tackled the beauty and the pain of having to come to terms with herself.