Goodlord: An Email

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE 2024

SKY ARTS AWARD NOMINEE for BREAKTHROUGH ARTIST OF THE YEAR 2024

A Guardian BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024

'ALL THE HOT WOMEN I KNOW HAVE ELLA FREARS ON THEIR BEDSIDE TABLES' Sheena Patel

'It's Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground reimaged for the renting generation' Emily Dinsdale, DAZED

'A dazzling treat of a book, genuinely inventive, spiky and funny' Holly Williams, Observer

'As compelling as any thriller' Graeme Richardson, Sunday Times

'I urge you to read Ella Frears' wild and dark new book' Eva Wiseman, The Observer

'A dark, addictive and deceptively erudite read' Kate Simpson, Telegraph (5*)

I had to wait, input a five-digit code sent to me via text.

When it came through it was:

00000 which seems insane.

I stared at it for more than my allotted minutes.

How is it that I found myself with all those holes?

A row of ohs. Disgusting.

No, I can't go on.

I won't, Ava. Do you watch porn?

Asked by letting agent, Ava, to make an account with the ominous sounding property technology 'Goodlord', our narrator launches into a breathless and rage fuelled reply that swings wildly between anecdotes of chaotic house-shares, grubby university halls, the claustrophobic school days that haunt her still, her various underpaid exploitative jobs at pubs and restaurants, relationships and sexual encounters both troubling and ecstatic, and an artists' residency that offers her the space she craves but demands a complicated transaction in return.

Written in sharp, unflinching prose, Goodlord exposes the grinding inequalities of modern life. It is a blistering exploration of what it means to live in a world where everything, including your dignity, comes with a price tag.