What A Time To Be Alive by Jenny Mustard
A fresh, sexy coming of age story, from the author of Okay Days, for fans of Sally Rooney and Mieko Kawakami.
In What a Time to Be Alive, as in life, old questions are made new againA fresh, tender, and resonant bildungsroman from the wonderfully large-hearted Jenny Mustard -- R. O. Kwon, author of Exhibit
Playful and witty, What a Time To Be Alive is a charming meditation on coming-of-age, privilege, and grief. With her sharp prose, Mustard conveys a vivid sense of longing, and the difficulties of finding your place in the world -- Cecile Pin, author of Wandering Souls
Fierce and heady - this intensely stylish novel captures the fever of youth -- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of The Sleep Watcher
What a Time To Be Alive is a compelling portrait of almost-adulthood in all its weird and wobbly-legged glory. Jenny writes about friendship, love, trauma and belonging in a way that's tender and true -- Chloë Ashby, author of Second Self
Jenny Mustard is that rare thing, a timeless writer, in that she writes intelligent, and elegant prose. She has a mysterious ability to lay things bare yet with a rare subtlety. Reminiscent of the power and grace of writers like Rachel Cusk and Raven Leilani. What a Time To Be Alive was the novel I needed. It is a tender and enigmatic look at Stockholm with a narrator I've never met before. Sickan sidled gently up to me and by the novel's beautiful end I was in love with her -- Molly Aitken, author of Bright I Burn
A beautifully plangent coming-of-age novel, What a Time to be Alive is written with an openness and a melancholy that frequently catches you off guard, and will go straight to your heart. As Jenny Mustard's Sickan - lonely, shy, trying to understand and to come to terms with the ways in which she's seen as 'different' by her peers - finds her painful way out of the false and rigid confines of an unhappy childhood and an even more despairing adolescence, and begins to finds her balance, with her first real friends, her first love, you will feel yourself coming to life with her, too. Sickan is a wholly unique and appealingly idiosyncratic character, but her story is for anyone who's ever been an adolescent. -- Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days
A novel about innocence, curiosity, and discovery, full of the big and small questions of stepping into oneself. Jenny Mustard writes with honesty and wit about the strange, mundane, and wondrous aspects of youth -- Ayşegül Savaş, author of The Anthropologists
With a crisp sense of humour, Jenny Mustard explores the great themes of love, sex, friendship and freedom in a campus novel that for all its cool Swedish restraint is also suffused with a beguiling tenderness -- Niamh Mulvey, author of The Amendments
Luminous and sharp, What a Time to Be Alive offers not only a dextrous recounting of a young woman's giddy, volatile journey in Stockholm but also an invitation for all of us to reconsider and rediscover our notions of self -- Yan Ge, author of Elsewhere
Jenny Mustard has conveyed with subtlety, precision and wonderful follow-through a worldview and sensibility that is both original and recognizable. A coming-of-age without pretensions; What a Time to Be Alive offers a freshness, curiosity and authenticity that readers will want to emulate -- Caoilinn Hughes, author of The Alternatives
Fresh, compelling and utterly original, this story kept surprising and delighting me -- Daisy Buchanan, author of Pity Party
What a Time to Be Alive is a beautifully observed story about the chaos, fear, and passion of youth. Told with deliciously sharp wit and styled to perfection by Jenny Mustard. Not a single line is wasted -- Scott Preston, author of The Borrowed Hills
Mustard writes so authentically about the experiences of women. The double standards that are expected, and the ever present fear of violence. I really felt for Sickan and how her childhood experiences left scars of mistrust and self-doubt. Mustard writes about relationships with compassion and truth. The book is a really astute observation on our obsession with curating ourselves so that we can ultimately be accepted and loved. -- Haleh Agar, author of Out of Touch
In What a Time to Be Alive, Mustard offers an achingly modern take on the small-town girl's arrival in the big city, creating, through the accretion of ordinary detail in the life of college student Sickan, a remarkable intimacy of voice -- Sarah Gilmartin, author of Service
A highly readable and unusually flinchless novel about the desperate and doomed desire to become a 'normal person' -- Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, author of The End of Nightwork
I loved it . . . a novel I found to be beautifully forthright, unexpected, and totally absorbing -- Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy
I loved What A Time to Be Alive. A young woman from southern Sweden searching for herself in love, in friendship and, most of all, in the micro-awareness of one's own endlessly dissectible nature. Heartfelt in all sorts of surprising ways. Romantic too . . . clever but not in a cold, distant way. The sort of clarity a person blurts out rather than thinks through. A vulnerability too. No literary imperiousness. I often seek out this feeling in books. Perhaps Banana Yoshimoto is where I tend to look for it. -- Rónán Hession, author of Ghost Mountain
What a Time to Be Alive is enchanting and piercing, a dance and a delight. Mustard's prose captures the effervescent and the luminescent, a joy to read and share. -- Bryan Washington, author of Family Meal
Playful and witty, What a Time To Be Alive is a charming meditation on coming-of-age, privilege, and grief. With her sharp prose, Mustard conveys a vivid sense of longing, and the difficulties of finding your place in the world -- Cecile Pin, author of Wandering Souls
Fierce and heady - this intensely stylish novel captures the fever of youth -- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of The Sleep Watcher
What a Time To Be Alive is a compelling portrait of almost-adulthood in all its weird and wobbly-legged glory. Jenny writes about friendship, love, trauma and belonging in a way that's tender and true -- Chloë Ashby, author of Second Self
Jenny Mustard is that rare thing, a timeless writer, in that she writes intelligent, and elegant prose. She has a mysterious ability to lay things bare yet with a rare subtlety. Reminiscent of the power and grace of writers like Rachel Cusk and Raven Leilani. What a Time To Be Alive was the novel I needed. It is a tender and enigmatic look at Stockholm with a narrator I've never met before. Sickan sidled gently up to me and by the novel's beautiful end I was in love with her -- Molly Aitken, author of Bright I Burn
A beautifully plangent coming-of-age novel, What a Time to be Alive is written with an openness and a melancholy that frequently catches you off guard, and will go straight to your heart. As Jenny Mustard's Sickan - lonely, shy, trying to understand and to come to terms with the ways in which she's seen as 'different' by her peers - finds her painful way out of the false and rigid confines of an unhappy childhood and an even more despairing adolescence, and begins to finds her balance, with her first real friends, her first love, you will feel yourself coming to life with her, too. Sickan is a wholly unique and appealingly idiosyncratic character, but her story is for anyone who's ever been an adolescent. -- Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days
A novel about innocence, curiosity, and discovery, full of the big and small questions of stepping into oneself. Jenny Mustard writes with honesty and wit about the strange, mundane, and wondrous aspects of youth -- Ayşegül Savaş, author of The Anthropologists
With a crisp sense of humour, Jenny Mustard explores the great themes of love, sex, friendship and freedom in a campus novel that for all its cool Swedish restraint is also suffused with a beguiling tenderness -- Niamh Mulvey, author of The Amendments
Luminous and sharp, What a Time to Be Alive offers not only a dextrous recounting of a young woman's giddy, volatile journey in Stockholm but also an invitation for all of us to reconsider and rediscover our notions of self -- Yan Ge, author of Elsewhere
Jenny Mustard has conveyed with subtlety, precision and wonderful follow-through a worldview and sensibility that is both original and recognizable. A coming-of-age without pretensions; What a Time to Be Alive offers a freshness, curiosity and authenticity that readers will want to emulate -- Caoilinn Hughes, author of The Alternatives
Fresh, compelling and utterly original, this story kept surprising and delighting me -- Daisy Buchanan, author of Pity Party
What a Time to Be Alive is a beautifully observed story about the chaos, fear, and passion of youth. Told with deliciously sharp wit and styled to perfection by Jenny Mustard. Not a single line is wasted -- Scott Preston, author of The Borrowed Hills
Mustard writes so authentically about the experiences of women. The double standards that are expected, and the ever present fear of violence. I really felt for Sickan and how her childhood experiences left scars of mistrust and self-doubt. Mustard writes about relationships with compassion and truth. The book is a really astute observation on our obsession with curating ourselves so that we can ultimately be accepted and loved. -- Haleh Agar, author of Out of Touch
In What a Time to Be Alive, Mustard offers an achingly modern take on the small-town girl's arrival in the big city, creating, through the accretion of ordinary detail in the life of college student Sickan, a remarkable intimacy of voice -- Sarah Gilmartin, author of Service
A highly readable and unusually flinchless novel about the desperate and doomed desire to become a 'normal person' -- Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, author of The End of Nightwork
I loved it . . . a novel I found to be beautifully forthright, unexpected, and totally absorbing -- Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy
I loved What A Time to Be Alive. A young woman from southern Sweden searching for herself in love, in friendship and, most of all, in the micro-awareness of one's own endlessly dissectible nature. Heartfelt in all sorts of surprising ways. Romantic too . . . clever but not in a cold, distant way. The sort of clarity a person blurts out rather than thinks through. A vulnerability too. No literary imperiousness. I often seek out this feeling in books. Perhaps Banana Yoshimoto is where I tend to look for it. -- Rónán Hession, author of Ghost Mountain
What a Time to Be Alive is enchanting and piercing, a dance and a delight. Mustard's prose captures the effervescent and the luminescent, a joy to read and share. -- Bryan Washington, author of Family Meal
Jenny Mustard is a writer and social media influencer, born in Sweden but living in London. She has over 600k followers, and more than 50 million views on YouTube. Jenny and her work have featured in the Observer, the Independent, Vogue and elsewhere. Her debut novel, Okay Days, was published in 2023.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781399740876 |
| ISBN 10 | 1399740873 |
| Title | What A Time To Be Alive |
| Author | Jenny Mustard |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Hodder & Stoughton |
| Year published | 2025-04-24 |
| Number of pages | 304 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |