Jenny McConnell from Greyfriars Art Shop talks about Dot in the Universe (2003); a novel by Lucy Ellmann. The story was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Believer Book Award. Ellmann herself won the Guardian Fiction Prize for her first book; Sweet Desserts (1988).

She [Ellmann] is an Anglo-American writer and I think this is her fourth novel. It’s sort of an ‘up yours’ to science and Christianity, and is her own made up, fairytale version of reincarnation with very odd things happening in a seaside resort. I have had to buy four copies of the book because I keep lending it to people insisting they have to read it, and they don’t give it back.

It’s probably the book of hers in which she is the most flamboyant. She likes to write things in a lot of capital letters and a lot of swearing. I think one of my favourite reviews said ‘reading Lucy Ellmann was like finding broken glass in your lollypop.’ It has a very funny scene where Dot tries to hang herself with her collection of knitted tea cosies and then wakes up in the morgue. It’s set in England, America, Scotland and Mexico and it’s got quite amusing descriptions of Edinburgh in it at one point as well – before she kills herself. In one life she [Dot] is a possum and then she’s dissected by her brother in a previous life and then he kills himself because he realises it’s his sister from a previous life. It’s a comical but obscene fairytale of science and reincarnation.

Click here for more information on Greyfriars Art Shop