Problems

Dark, raw, and very funny, Problems introduces us to Maya, a young woman with a smart mouth, time to kill, and a heroin hobby that isn't much fun anymore.

Maya's been able to get by in New York on her wits and a dead-end bookstore job for years, but when her sweet, heavy-drinking husband leaves her and her favourite professor ends their affair, her barely-calibrated life descends into chaos, and she has to make some choices.

Maya's struggle to be alone, to be a modern woman, and to be thoughtful, imperfect and alive in a world that doesn't really care what happens to her is rendered with dead-eyed clarity and unnerving charm.
Balancing vivid intensity with numb disdain,

Problems takes every tired trope about addiction and recovery, "likeable" characters, and redemption narratives and makes them fresh, necessary and desperately funny.

Explicit and raw, Problems is an astonishing debut novel

Jade Sharma is a writer living in New York. She has an MFA from the New School.