Lioness by Emily Perkins
2025 Longlist

Lioness

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ABOUT
THE BOOK

From humble beginnings, Therese has let herself grow used to a life of luxury after marrying into an empire-building family. But when rumours of corruption gather around her husband’s latest development, the social opprobrium is shocking, the fallout swift, and Therese begins to look at her privileged and insular world with new eyes. In the flat below Therese, something else is brewing. Her neighbour Claire believes she’s discovered the secret to living with freedom and authenticity, freeing herself from the mundanity of domesticity. Therese finds herself enchanted by the lure of the permissive zone Claire creates in her apartment – a place of ecstatic release.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Emily
Perkins NZ

Emily Perkins is the author of a prize-winning collection of short stories, Not Her Real Name, and four novels, including Novel About My Wife (winner of the NZ Book Award and the Believer Magazine Book of the Year, and The Forrests (longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction). Her work for stage and screen includes co-writing the film adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s novel The Rehearsal (dir. Alison Maclean), an adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and the original play The Made. She lives in New Zealand.

Emily Perkins is the author of a prize-winning collection of short stories, Not Her Real Name, and four novels, including Novel About My Wife (winner of the NZ Book Award and the Believer Magazine Book of the Year, and The Forrests (longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction). Her work for stage and screen includes co-writing the film adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s novel The Rehearsal (dir. Alison Maclean), an adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and the original play The Made. She lives in New Zealand.

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NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

Lioness explores the relationship between privilege and inertia. It looks at class and the need to constantly accumulate. Therese, the main character, has a homeware shop in which taste becomes judgement. The novel explores philanthropy and how we use this to make up for privilege. Comfort makes change so much harder.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
06/07/2023
Country
New Zealand
Original Language
English
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing
Borrow this book from Libraries Ireland

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