“The Optimist” will be published in the US on March 30, 2021. Pre-order a copy now at your local bookstore or click below!
“Funny and upbeat, simply the best women’s fiction I’ve read in years”
“Hilarious . . . Kipner writes beautifully, is emotionally intelligent and has a keen eye for detail - the more absurd the better. The result is a different, occasionally deranged and always very clever read. I loved every minute.”
“Like its protagonist, The Optimist is completely bonkers, but in the best way possible.”
“If you’re looking for a romping romcom with which to escape the knocks of everyday life, this one’s your guy.”
Named a 2017 "best summer read" by the daily mail's top critics
“Write or Die Tribe” Pick as one of the “Books We Can’t Wait to Read in March” 2021
“Unique, quirky, and outrageously funny!”
“Absolutely brilliant ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️”
Synopsis
Meet Tabitha Gray, a delusional girl from Topanga, California, who redefines what it means to be a truly hopeless romantic. Tabby suffers from an aggressive strain of cock-eyed optimism – no amount of failure, embarrassment or humiliation can dent her fierce belief that real, true, lasting love is just around the corner.
Where most people think, fantasize and dream, Tabby says, feels and does. Whether waiting in her lingerie for Harrison Ford to open the door of his hotel room; declaring her love, aged nine, for Ernesto the gardener; encountering Al Pacino in a Russian bathhouse; seeking passion with a blind man on the advice of a wise old woman with dementia at her grandmother’s home for the elderly; or sending intimate photos to a random sexter with an apparently charming dick, Tabby refuses to be crushed by her many misadventures. She has to keep believing, because if she gives up, what then? Ill-advisedly armed with the words of Dorothy Parker, Tabby knows that her own ferocious optimism is the only thing keeping her heart-sore, wine-swilling mother and cynical, single-mum sister from giving up on love altogether. She is their only hope. If Tabby can find love, then they too will believe…
In this warmly witty debut novel, Sophie Kipner takes a satirical look at the extremity of romantic desperation, and pays wry tribute to the deep human need to keep on heroically searching for love despite our manifold absurdities.
PRESS
by dan dalton
“Tabitha “Tabby” Gray knows love is just around the corner... so long as she can remain positive. Funny and upbeat, simply the best women’s fiction I’ve read in years”
by Carolyn Percy for Wales arts review
features
july 31, 2017
