‘A must read for anyone who has loved hard, lost big and needs to be reminded that it’s all okay’ LENA DUNHAM

‘A wonderful novel, I loved it’ CAROLINE O'DONOGHUE

From the bestselling author of Really Good, Actually, a wickedly funny, wise and tender novel about modern love, artistic ambition and what happens when our plans for greatness fall through.

In a city, where rents are rising and dreams are quietly downsizing, Carolina holds court in her apartment – home to Noble Failure, a chaotic, monthly performance night. It's where once-aspiring artists met and fell in love: where Sophie, a young TV director hustling her way up the ladder, found her boyfriend Owen, a mercurial artist currently voicing a daisy on a children's tv show. And where they both orbited Will – once a wunderkind comedy writer, now wondering if he peaked too soon. It goes without saying: they are all insufferable.

Sophie and Owen and Will and Carolina aren't unhappy, exactly. Their lives are vaguely in the territory of where they imagined they'd be. So why does it not feel … complete? Sophie has started texting Will – innocent jokes, small asides – but what began as nothing is feeling dangerously close to something. When their one now-famous friend announces she's returning for the Noble Failure anniversary show, an existential panic sets in – and soon the big life choices that seemed so distant arrive at each of their doors.

A hilarious and deeply moving reckoning with love, friendship and success, Small Pond is a love story in the largest sense: to creative ambition, to the people we choose and to the strangely sustaining act of trying, again and again, in public.

‘If you've ever started the Artist's Way; signed up for an open mic night; or simply been absolutely certain that your best friends are all geniuses, then Small Pond is for you’ CAROLINE O'DONOGHUE, author of The Rachel Incident