Mirabelles

Annie Freud’s award-winning first collection, The Best Man That Ever Was, introduced readers to a remarkably versatile new voice; The Mirabelles delivers a similarly exhilarating cornucopia – the Mask of Temporary Madness, Marc Almond, mini-novels a sonnet long, Carottes Vichy, and the most gripping account of a billiard game you’ll ever read. However, in a new sequence derived from family letters, Freud has invented almost a new kind of writing: neither ‘found’ nor ‘made’ in the conventional sense, these poems are profoundly moving, and startling in their boldly unfashionable lack of irony. Elsewhere The Mirabelles is full of the world-stuff – the clothes and food, the art and social intrigues – with which we dress and conceal our deeper emotions and appetites. In the end, this is a book about reality and its representations, and the truth and lies we tell about ourselves.

"Original, moving, smart and memorable." Andrew Motion, author, "In the Blood"", "Original, moving, smart and memorable." --Andrew Motion, author, "In the Blood"

Annie Freud studied English and European Literature at the University of Warwick. Her first collection The Best Man That Ever Was received the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award. She is a tutor in poetry writing and lives in Dorset with her husband.