Lucy Ellmann

Man or Mango? Lucy Ellmann

By the Booker-shortlisted author of Ducks, Newburyport, a formally madcap and prescient novel about men (and women), mangos (and bees), and modern love.

George is a poet, desperate to finish his epic poem (about ice hockey) and pining over his lost love (Eloïse). Eloïse, meanwhile, is a misfit, hermiting away--or attempting to--in the countryside cottage she bought with her inheritance, where she spends her days writing letters to famous men who hate women, as well as famous women who hate women (e.g. the Queen), the producers of shoddy products (poorly sized toilet paper roll holders), and entities which frighten her cats with inappropriate piloting of helicopters (the RAF). She and George are both melancholics, and should be together, yet tragically are not. Really, though, amidst the horrors of the modern world, how can any two people be expected to find love? Told from their twin points of view, Man or Mango: A Lament is a transatlantic novel of unrequited love and modern loneliness.