Zoe Pilger's first novel Eat My Heart Out was republished as a Serpent's Tail Modern Classic in July 2020.
Eat My Heart Out was first published by Serpent's Tail in 2014, and won a Somerset Maugham Award and a Betty Trask Award at the 2015 Society of Authors in the UK. It was nominated for a Lambda award in the US. Read the first chapter at Dazed & Confused.
"Pilger might be the heiress to Angela Carter."
- Deborah Levy, The Independent
"Craving whatever she hasn't got and detesting whatever she has, Zoe Pilger's brilliant and psychically bulimic narrator is everyone's
anti-Bridget Jones. An awareness of the pathology of romantic love,and a terror of what lies in its absence, lies at the heart of this brutally funny book."
- Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick
"Pilger writes with such infectious rage... Not since Martin Amis's work can I remember a novel so exhilarated - and made so exhilarating - by its own sense of disgust."
- review by James Walton in the Daily Mail
"So hooray for Zoe Pilger: her debut novel is about the London we know and love and it is dead smart and gloriously, mercifully, snort-out-loud hilarious ... Eat My Heart Out is the hipster Bridget Jones's Diary it's ok to like."
- Stuart Hammond, Dazed & Confused
"It's rare that a debut novel has the power to both make the reader laugh out loud and sigh with admiration, but Zoe Pilger's does just that."
- The Press Association
"Super-smart, funny, and dark as midnight"
- Marie Claire
"Brilliantly odd, very funny."
- The Financial Times
"Like a foul-mouthed Nancy Mitford for the Gawker generation, Zoe Pilger brings a ruthlessly sharp eye to our muddled and indulgent times. Eat My Heart Out is viciously, violently funny, and marks the arrival of a fearsome new voice in British fiction."
- Sam Byers, author of Idiopathy
"Eat My Heart Out is a remarkable thing: a debut novel that is both laugh-out-loud funny and unflinchingly serious. Even more extraordinary is that Zoe Pilger heightens this clever balancing act with skill, meaning, and unparalleled insouciance. Reading this novel is like watching the most daring of tightrope walkers at work: we are captivated every step of the way, left breathless right until the very end. I loved it."
- Lee Rourke, author of Vulgar Things
"Bristles with outrage and extravagant absurdity ... dark and funny."
- TLS
"Meet 2014 funniest new writer..."
- Company
"Anarchic and funny, Pilger's book has burned a space for you to think."
- review by Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist
"Eat My Heart Out has been compared to Bret Easton Ellis, Kathy Acker, Lena Dunham’s Girls and early Amis, but transcends all these influences."
- review by Max Dunbar, 3am Magazine
"Read it to yourself with the measured pauses of Bill Hicks to
fully appreciate her dry wit. This is a beady-eyed, fantastically
funny satire of pop-cultural womanhood and the consumer-driven pretentions that undercut modern hedonism."
- review by Elizabeth Aaron, author of Low Expectations
"Hyper intelligent, hilarious and written with a disgusting amount of skill; Eat My Heart Out will linger in your mind days after reading. And you’ll never look at Crème de Menthe the same way, again."
cover design by Rose Stallard
Romance is dead – Ann-Marie’s killed it
Meet 2014’s most outrageous, funny, and shocking anti-heroine: Ann-Marie.
She’s 23, her life has collapsed, and she’s blaming everyone but herself.
Heartbroken, skint, and furious, she’s convinced that love – sweet love! – is the answer to all of her problems, until she meets legendary feminist Stephanie Haight, a woman who could be her saviour – or her final undoing.
From neo-burlesque pop-up strip clubs, to ironic little-mermaid themed warehouse parties via ritual worship ceremonies summoning ancient power goddesses, disastrous one night stands with extravagantly unsuitable men, naked cleaning jobs, forced appearances on Woman’s Hour, and baby boomer house parties in Islington, Ann-Marie hurtles through London and life, urged on by Stephanie, who is convinced that if she can save Ann-Marie, she’ll rescue her entire generation from the curse of ironic detachment.
Fiercely clever and unapologetically wild, Eat My Heart Out is the satire for our narcissistic, hedonistic, post-post feminist era.