The first work of fiction from award-winning poet Frances Leviston offers a frighteningly perceptive slice of contemporary womanhood.

Ten women, all called Claire, are tangled up in complex power dynamics with their families, friends, and lovers. Though all are different ages, and leading different lives, each is haunted by the difficulty of living on her own terms, and by her capacity to harm and be harmed.

Claire is a teenaged babysitter left alone with a strange little girl and her imaginary friend. She is a woman trying to escape her elderly mother by employing an android carer. Claire is a young TV journalist wrecking her first big interview. Claire’s boyfriend discovers more than he bargains for when he begins to read her diary.

And no matter her age or background, Claire is living in the shadow of a monstrous mother.

With startling insight and understanding, Frances Leviston offers a frighteningly perceptive slice of contemporary womanhood. In forensic, indelible prose that is often bleakly funny, The Voice in My Ear reveals a brilliant new voice in fiction – and invites us to consider our own place in the relationships that define us.

‘Beautifully, psychologically exact. Leviston reveals, confronts, disarms and pares us from our unwitting, falser selves. Superbly written and fearlessly imagined fiction.’ SARAH HALL

‘Striking… the stories glance off each other to build a striking portrait of contemporary womanhood.’ GUARDIAN, BEST FICTION 2020

‘Leviston is a mistress of precision and emotional insight.’ HILARY MANTEL, TLS

I loved it. I absolutely loved it. It felt like a choose your own adventure version of somebody’s life… I cannot say enough how much I enjoyed it. It’s a writer putting herself through her paces – it’s showing us what she can do and I’m really excited to see what she does next. — Naomi Alderman ― BBC Radio 4 Front Row

Brilliant, bracing… Dazzling… One of the many triumphs of this original, peculiarly truthful book is to leave us questioning what kindness is and what care is, no longer able to take the platitudes of daily life for granted but also unwilling to leave them behind. — Lara Feigel ― Guardian

It’s hard to explain how good this fiction debut by Frances Leviston is… So thrilling… Outstandingly well written. — Claire Harman ― Times Literary Supplement *Books of the Year*

Frances Leviston’s debut work of fiction positively knocked my socks off. Each of the 10 stories in The Voice in My Ear is about a different woman called Claire ― an apt appellation for characters illuminating aspects of modern life… She has triumphantly succeeded in turning a poetic perceptivity to the [short story] form. — Mia Levitin ― Financial Times

[The Voice in My Ear has] a psychological and emotional coherence unusual for a story collection… You can feel the subtext pulse between the lines and occasionally, thrillingly, it surges onto the page… Extraordinary… Leviston is so skilled at noticing and cataloguing the emotional abrasion of being a daughter, the toll of motherhood and love’s ability to wound… But these responses are matched, and exceeded, by the admiration, excitement and exhilaration provoked by what she achieves on the page. — Chris Power ― Sunday Times