Breasts

In this unwavering, sharp and profoundly thoughtful memoir, Jean Hannah Edelstein unfolds her experiences, both universal and devastatingly unique, with trademark tenderness and wit . . . a must-read

Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist

Brilliant and exquisite. Nobody writes about the curveballs life throws at you, or helps you deal with them, like Jean Hannah Edelstein

David Whitehouse, author of About A Son

Absolutely loved it. Painful and funny and essential

Francesca Segal

Jean Hannah Edelstein is honest, cynical, loving and funny. Breasts is a special book - short and powerful with no messing around. For people with breasts, mothers, women with cancer, and the people who love them, it will be an indispensable read

Jessica Stanley

Unique and beautiful . . . so tender and furious and funny

Jo Cheetham, author of Killjoy

With brevity, piquancy and wit, Jean Hannah Edelstein has written a memoir that speaks directly to the public and private nature of bodies and autonomy. Her prose has the buoyancy and bravery of fellow New Yorker Laurie Colwin

Catherine Taylor, author of The Stirrings

I would read anything Jean Hannah Edelstein writes. Breasts is a thunderclap of a memoir. When I read it, in a single sitting, I was blown away. Breasts is one of those books you read and just know instantly that it's going into the canon; it feels so urgent, and yet somehow like it's always existed. The writing is stunning, lyrical and funny and absolutely smarting with truth. Reading it, I felt seen in a way I haven't for a long time, and that I was being given permission to be angry about so many experiences I had dismissed or buried or been told to ignore. I love how fearlessly Edelstein writes, how she embraces contradiction, how funny she is and how deeply she feels. It is a difficult time to be a woman and books like this have never been more vital. Read it if you have breasts or if you know someone with breasts

Marianne Levy, author of Don’t Forget to Scream

I loved this book. A perfect small-form memoir, it is smart, funny and heartbreaking. It has made me think again about the body and how it shapes us and our identity, and how all of a sudden it can take such a tragically different turn. It is the best account of the shock of losing your breasts to cancer I have read. Devastating, but also funny, illuminating and charming, leaving me rooting for Edelstein, and wanting to get my hands on everything else she has written

Lily Dunn, author of Sins of my Father

A tit punch of a book, in a good way. Painful, breathtaking, visceral and galvanising

Rosamund Dean, author of Reconstruction

Breasts is incredibly moving and sad and funny and absolutely a book everyone should read . . . You'll read it in a sitting and it will change you

Benjamin Buckland

A witty, fearless, political and yet highly personal essay that is also an inspired piece of writing. In economic and elegant prose, Edelstein's superbly crafted tribute to the most fêted (and fetishised) part of female anatomy explores issues of shame, pleasure and loss - and is, ultimately, triumphant. Breasts is compulsively readable

Margaret Meyer, author of The Witching Tide

A bittersweet, powerful gut-punch of a memoir

Leah Hazard, author of Womb

I devoured it in one sitting. An incredibly moving and memorable portrait of womanhood and how the world responds to women's bodies. All in Jean Hannah Edelstein's enviously economic, funny, smart and beautiful prose

Marisa Bate, author of Wild Hope

I gobbled it up in a day and found it such a pleasure to read - frank, witty, moving, true . . . beautiful

Liz Berry

I read it very quickly - the writing is compulsive - but it's stayed with me for much longer. Deeply personal and extremely incisive . . . heartbreaking

Kate Murray-Browne, author of One Girl Began

So good. Made me laugh out loud and cry, sometimes in the span of the same page

Miranda Ward, author of Adrift

Powerful, funny, frank, furious and moving

Lisa Owens, author of Not Working

A deeply moving and funny three-part memoir centred on the author's relationship to her breasts. From sex, power and the male gaze to feeding, motherhood and illness . . . I loved it

Joanna Wolfarth, author of Milk