How to Be Somebody Else

LoveReading Says

Set in NYC in 2015, Miranda Pountney’s How to Be Somebody Else debut is a spellbinding un-coming-of-age story that sees a 30-something Briton walk out on her career to housesit, rent-free, for an artist, with a vague intention to finally get around to writing. 

Pountney’s own writing is incisively sparse, and laced with existential tension as Dylan, feeling that her life is “like a string of accidents”, embarks on an un-doing of her life, driven by a vague need to find the space “to let herself happen.” 

With her boyfriend living on the West Coast, in the dark about her resignation and move, Dylan embarks on an affair with a married neighbour, Gabe. Their connection is visceral, they don’t discuss their respective long-term relationships, or their futures.

Then there’s an impending hurricane, both real and symbolic, made all the more symbolic when it’s downgraded to a super storm. Tellingly, this downgrade is disappointing to Dylan, with its “devastation withheld”.

Wily and sometimes shocking, courtesy of Dylan’s recklessness and Gabe’s laissez-faire nonchalance, I loved the observational detail and intimate character portraits, with the author’s sharp eye shining through Dylan. For example: “From the outside, the bar looks like a whore house might in Disneyland.”

In How to Be Somebody Else Miranda Pountney has delivered a showstopping debut performance on the literary stage — I can’t wait to read what she writes next.

Reviewed by Joanne Owen
Joanne Owen’s lifelong love of reading and writing began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, and very much wished that witches (and Mrs Pepperpot) were real.
More reviews by Joanne Owen

About How to Be Somebody Else

Exquisitely written, sublimely fraught and erotically charged, How to Be Somebody Else is an uncoming-of-age in New York City

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