The Wreck

‘Satisfyingly detailed and juicy, it’s an utter treat and I will be giving a copy to my best friend’ – Amy Liptrot, author of THE OUTRUNThe Wreck is a completely magnetic piece of work. In her story of two couples, Stewart explores class, desire, friendship, ambition and the endless mysteries of human behaviour with fearless clarity – Sophie Elmhirst, author of MAURICE AND MARALYNLizzy Stewart’s characters feel to me like friends. I want to have a drink with them, hug them, shake them…. The Wreck is a tender and wise portrait of love and friendship that ponders with an astonishingly light touch big questions to do with who we are and how we live. She’s done it again! – Chloë Ashby, author of SECOND SELFA beautiful, poignant study of friendship as it shifts from light to shade and back again over a lifetime. Lizzy Stewart’s characters are so finely drawn that we see and feel their every move. The Wreck is a brilliantly insightful tale of careful manners and caustic undercurrents, all wrapped up in the disheveled tastefulness of the country house. Utterly charming, with a thrillingly critical edge. – Alex HydeFriendship, love and a gorgeous old house. A beautiful story beautifully told. I loved inhabiting The Wreck – Jessica Stanley, author of CONSIDER YOURSELF KISSEDI fell hopelessly in love with The Wreck. Lizzy Stewart has created the most inviting, appealing world for her endlessly compelling characters, whose charm and flaws kept me glued to their dramas and entanglements throughout, and left me utterly bereft at the end. A beautiful, funny, clever, insightful book about friendship, desire and idealism, that tackles the great universal question of how to live. – Lisa OwensWhat a rare treat to read a graphic novel that deals with love and sex from a sophisticated female perspective. Propulsive and addictive, The Wreck is a dream house filled with deep truths about relationships and yearning for a bigger, freer life, and I wanted to inhabit it forever. – Astrid Goldsmith, author of THE CRYSTAL VASEImpressive, immersive and full of knotty psychological insight – Joff Winterhart, author of DEAR HISTORIANA one-of-a-kind novel: a perfectly-judged story of friendship and mistakes, love, intimacy and the passing of time. I adored every page of it. – Ana Kinsella, author of FRIDA SLATTERY AS HERSELFLizzy Stewart has done it again: written and drawn another wonderful book. The Wreck is incredibly intimate and domestic but also astonishingly universal. – Claire Fuller, author of UNSETTLED GROUNDNo other writer or artist can pinpoint the queasy interdependence of class and the arts in England with such nauseous accuracy, only to pull the rug out from under us with tenderness – Joanna Walsh, author of AMATEURS!I adored this… [an] intimate tale of class, envy, love and friendship – Madeleine Feeny * Bookseller 10 titles not to miss in April *‘I loved Lizzy Stewart’s The Wreck, an exquisitely drawn and expertly calibrated tale of friendship, sex, class and property and the dangerous, contested places where they meet – Anna Hope, author of ALBIONA wonderful book- it’s rare to find a novel which so wholeheartedly resists the urge to judge its characters. I love, too, how completely it fits its form, with the nuances of the characters’ body language which are visible in the drawings bleeding into the text, changing the way that it’s read. It felt to me that it was a story which couldn’t possibly have been told in any other way – Jessie Greengrass

Lizzy Stewart is an author based in London. She writes and illustrates books for both children and adults. In 2017 her picture book There’s a Tiger in the Garden won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and a World Illustration Award. Her debut full-length novel Alison was published in 2022. She teaches Illustration at Goldsmiths, University of London and has also taught courses at the Tate and on behalf of the National Gallery.