Published in 2020
272 pages
Sophie Heawood grew up in Yorkshire, where she developed an early understanding of celebrity as the only vegetarian in the local state school, and wrote earnest letters to the South African ambassador about apartheid, aged ten. She later studied languages at Kings College and Birkbeck, both part of London University, while working nights as the door-girl in the legendary nightclub Trash.
She has also lived in Barcelona working as an au pair, in Hong Kong working as an extra in Chinese soap operas, and in Los Angeles, where she interviewed the famous and wrote columns on modern life for publications including the Sunday Times, Guardian, Observer, Vogue, and Vice magazine. She was nominated for Interviewer of the Year at the British Press Awards 2019. She lives in Hackney, East London, with her daughter, and hasn’t quite stopped nightclubbing yet.
What is this book about?
This “funny, dark, and true” (Caitlin Moran) memoir is Bridget Jones’s Diary for the Fleabag generation: What happens when you have an unplanned baby on your own in your mid-thirties before you’ve worked out how to look after yourself, let alone a child?
This is the story of one woman’s adventures in single motherhood. It’s about what happens when Mr. Right isn’t around so you have a baby with Mr. Wrong, a touring musician who tells you halfway through your pregnancy that he’s met someone else, just after you’ve given up your LA life and moved back to England to attempt some kind of modern family life with him.
So now you’re six months along, sleeping on a friend’s sofa in London, and waking up in the morning to a room full of taxidermied animals who seem to be staring at you. The Hungover Games about what it’s like raising a baby on your own when you’re more at home on the dance floor than in the kitchen. It’s about how to invent the concept of the two-person family when you grew up in a traditional nuclear unit of four, and your kid’s friends all have happily married parents too, and you are definitely not, in any way, ticking off the days until all those lovely couples get divorced.
Unflinchingly honest, emotionally raw, and surprisingly sweet, The Hungover Games is the true story of what happens if you’ve been looking for love your whole life and finally find it where you least expect it.