It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide

Miranda Pountney

How to Be Somebody Else

How to Be Somebody Else

Summary

When Dylan begins an affair with Gabe, nothing will be the same again.

‘A stunning novel… The sentences buzz and hum’
SAMANTHA HARVEY

‘This debut about a thirtysomething’s tangled web of lust has literary oomph’
SUNDAY TIMES

On the surface Dylan has achieved the impossible – a life in New York. And yet it is not the thing she’d imagined. When she walks out of her career, then apartment, and into a housesit for an artist she’s never met, she does not tell her friends, her family, or her boyfriend Matt.

But how much can a person change? At a party she meets her new neighbour Gabe, who is married to Kate, and the affair that follows consumes her. She resolves to explore what is fixed and what is variable, until an unexpected encounter between the two couples forces Dylan to confront her future.

‘Unsettling and original’
TESSA HADLEY

‘Stylish, sharp, genuinely funny’
CLAIRE POWELL

‘So sharp and well observed’
REBECCA WAIT

‘Impressive’
OBSERVER

***A MARIE CLAIRE BEST BOOK OF 2024***