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Eliza Moss's intoxicating debut novel is a dark, intense, and compelling account of what happens when a young woman falls in love with the wrong kind of man.

Domestic abuse, toxic relationship.

Enola is approaching 30 and everything feels like a lot. The boxes aren’t ticked and she feels adrift in a way she thought she would have beaten by now. She wants to be a writer but can’t finish a first draft; she romanticizes her childhood but won’t speak to her mother; she has never been in a serious relationship but yearns to be one half of a couple that DIYs together at the weekends.

Enter: enigmatic writer. Enola falls in love and starts to dream about their perfect future: the wedding, the publishing deals, the house in Stoke Newington. But the reality is far from perfect. He’s distant. But she’s a Cool Girl, she doesn’t need to hear from him every day. He hangs out with his ex. But she’s a Cool Girl, she’s not insecure. Is she? He has dark moods. But he’s a creative, that’s part of his ‘process’. Her best friend begs her to end it, but Enola can’t. She’s a Cool Girl.

She might feel like she’s going crazy at times, but she wants him. She needs him. She would die without him…That’s what love is, isn’t it? Over the next twenty-four hours (and two years), everything that Enola thinks she knows is about to unravel, and she has to think again about how she sees love, family, and friendship and—most importantly—herself.

With notes of Fleabag & I May Destroy You but with the sparseness and emotional accuracy of writers like Ali Smith and Lily King, What It’s Like In Words is a close examination of what it means to experience the intense emotional uncertainty of first love.

Don't just take our word for it...

“What It’s Like in Words is a consuming portrait of a young woman building and rebuilding herself from the wreckage of her past lives. Eliza Moss masterfully renders how it feels to be ruled by grief and toxic obsession, and what it takes to break out of a prison of your own making. Devastating and tender, What It’s Like in Words is a love letter to friendship, art-making, and the messiest parts of ourselves.”
– Ruth Madievsky, national bestselling author of All-Night Pharmacy

“With echoes of Sally Rooney and Lily King, Eliza Moss is a fresh new voice who exquisitely captures the quirks of what it means to be imperfectly human and beautifully fragile. This book reads like poetry.”
– Neely Tubati Alexander, author of Love Buzz and In a Not So Perfect World

“What It’s Like in Words fills the void left when Phoebe Waller Bridge said ‘no’ to Fleabag Season 3 … Enola discovers the power in rewriting the narrative of her own life, of evolving from a passive character to an agent in relationships who can revoke consent when she wants to. What It’s Like in Words is the story of the self–the whole self, the uncurated self–overpowering the fear of being left behind.”
– F(r)iction

Taste the very first page

Daylight has drained from the room, and the lights have turned on in the skyscrapers. Circles. Rectangles. Fluorescent vertebrates across the ceilings. I imagine them humming like machines that zap insects.

My cracked phone is a memento from the tube station last night, and there is another on my collarbone, below the trim of my Mario Kart T-shirt, like a club stamp from a night out: a bruise the size of a thumbprint.

Count to three and then stand up.

One.

Two.

Three—

I turn on the main light, and my bedroom is familiar. Desk with laptop; bed between two windows; table with a notepad by the Pixar lamp; bookshelf holding color-arranged books; wardrobe, with last night’s clothes crumpled at its foot like a chalk outline from a crime scene.

THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE.

Ruth bought me that shirt for Pride, but now the arms are broken and the spine is snapped. Ruth and I never used to argue before him. When we broke up a year ago, she told me that my first impression was the right one. But how can I separate the first impression from the last one?

December 2024