The Panic Years

Nell Frizzell’s thoughts on womanhood and motherhood are as informative as they are poetic. Writing that challenges and enlightens you just as much as it entertains and stimulates you is rare, this book confidently does both on an important and complicated topic for modern women. * Dolly Alderton *Searingly honest, witty and moving. For anyone who knows what it’s like to simultaneously want to weep with joy and throw your child out of the window, Frizzell is a very welcome voice in the conversation on motherhood. * Vogue *There is so much about womanhood that feels indefinable. And yet with her definitions of the flux, and the panic years, Nell manages to define the indefinable - as well as uniting childfree women and mothers, where the two are so often pitted against one another. Lyrical, moving and thorough, this is a memoir, a feminist text and a piece of social commentary. Every millennial woman should have it on her bookshelf. * Pandora Sykes *Wonderful… touching, helpful and enlightening. * Sara Pascoe *A compassionate, funny and beautifully written exploration of contemporary womanhood - the book may have ‘panic’ in the title, but Nell’s words calmed and soothed me deeply. * Daisy Buchanan *Nell Frizzell is a master. In The Panic Years, she picks you up and drops you deep inside herself and makes you see what she sees and feel what she feels in a manner that is both jarring and beautiful. I particularly recommend this book to men as it will start to heal the rift between the sexes that capitalism has – if not created – nourished and exploited. This book is a visceral exploration of one young woman’s life that has immediately applicable lessons for us all. Vital reading. Lest my trumpeting make you worry it’s only “important,” The Panic Years is also fun, funny, and warm. I love it dearly! * Rob Delaney, writer and star of Catastrophe *Heartening, eye-opening, hilarious. I’m glad Nell has given this weird time a term we can all use.Smart and perceptive…Written with real humour and consideration for the point at which every woman is in their life, this is a must-read for 2021. * Stylist, best new non-fiction for 2021 *Frizzell’s compassionate, compulsive prose fizzes with imaginative humour and metaphor. A memoir that’s funny and heartfelt, personal and political. * Evening Standard *One of the most gripping, beautiful and euphoric glimpses of motherhood that I have ever read. Frizzell is an engaging and endearing narrator of this poignant memoir. * Telegraph *

Nell Frizzell is a writer, journalist and Vogue columnist. She has written and worked for the Guardian, VICE, The Sunday Times, Elle, the BBC, the Observer, Grazia and The Independent among many others. Her first book, The Panic Years, was an exploration of bodies, babies and the big questions facing modern life. Her debut novel, Square One, painted a humorous picture of moving home, fathers and daughters and surviving heartbreak. She lives in Oxford, in a very small house full of pasta and bedding and bikes.