Nicola Griffith So Lucky

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Handheld Press is proud to have published So Lucky, the UK edition of award-winning novelist Nicola Griffith’s stupendous new novel. It WON the 2019 Washington State Book Award, was named one of the Boston Globe’s Best Books of 2018, and was shortlisted for the 2019 Tournament of Books. The American Library Association named it as one of 2018’s best fiction books on their Over the Rainbow Booklist, and it sure deserves to be there.

Watch our video explaining how Handheld came to publish So Lucky.

Read Nicola’s interview on Disability Arts Online explaining how So Lucky developed her activist life.

Even better, listen to Nicola reading two extracts: this one, the opening pages of the novel, and this one, when Mara is taking her anger out on her house.

Read the reviews

‘So Lucky is a book that will change the way you view the world and stands as a testament to Griffith’s writing skills. This is not a long book, but I don’t think any readers will feel short-changed by that.  The two essays and the interview at the end are a bonus and I read them equally avidly.’ – Crime Review

‘A terse and brutally urgent novel, So Lucky is a reminder that Griffith is one of the most important writers working today.’ DIVA Magazine (they named So Lucky their Book of the Month for December 2018).

‘So Lucky is feminist fiction at its best: powerful storytelling informed by politics with a memorable plot and protagonist. This thriller is a fantastic afternoon read―and once you pick it up, you’ll read all the way to the end.’ Julie Enszer, Ms. Magazine

‘A short, fast-paced whirlwind of a novel … Spine tingling and in places downright terrifying.’ ― Independent

‘With great insight and power, Griffith chronicles one woman’s fight … the plot twists into a sophisticated thriller.’ ― Jane Ciabattari, BBC Culture

‘Searing … a fresh and powerful novel and antidote to the sense of victimhood.’ ― Booklist

‘Griffith examines the impact that fear of the outside world and internal disintegration can have those who only know themselves through strength.’ ― Erin Vanderhoof, Vanity Fair

‘In So Lucky, Nicola Griffith replicates the actual experience of becoming disabled. This genre-violating story begins straightforwardly, then slides into a hallucinatory exploration of the body, reality, and identity. It is disorienting, destabilising, and game-changing. I have never read anything like it.’ ― Riva Lehrer, author of Golem Girl

‘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.’ ― Katharine Coldiron, Arts Fuse

‘Nicola Griffith’s So Lucky is compelling reading, a tour de force of the onset of disability. This is the first novel I have read that describes an autobiographical experience of disability from Day One with a relentlessness that can parallel a disability itself. It is intense, sad, and dramatic combining mystery, romance, terror (internal and external), and hope. Just like life itself.’ Steven E Brown, cofounder of the Institute on Disability Culture

‘Nicola Griffith’s depiction of Mara, newly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, shows how we, as humans, deal with anger and love, hopelessness and hope. Griffith’s lean, taut prose, and her willingness to delve deeply into Mara’s fears, transforms So Lucky into a story about what we all share: an unpredictable life filled with vulnerability and a need for community.’ Kenny Fries, author of In the Province of the Gods