Temper

"There’ s a gap where my sense of place should be. It’ s quite a useful one sometimes. It allows me to sit on the cusp of an opinion."

Following a move to the Netherlands, a young woman dissects the developments of her new life: awkward exchanges with the people she meets, days spent alone freelancing in her apartment, her confrontation with boredom and unease.

In her newfound isolation, she develops an unusual friendship with Colette, a woman she neither likes nor can keep away from. As her feelings of dislocation grow, larger anxieties about her purpose – or lack of it – begin to encroach. And underneath it all, a burgeoning frustration bubbles.

Intimate, incisive and brilliantly observed, Temper explores loneliness, self-worth and disconnection with head-nodding accuracy.

Phoebe Walker is originally from Northumberland. She has lived in both London and the Netherlands and is now based in Manchester, where she works as a development consultant. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Animal Noises, received an Eric Gregory Award in 2021. Phoebe also won the Mairtí n Crawford Poetry Award in 2019 and a Northern Writers' Award for poetry in 2012. Phoebe's poetry has been published in Ambit, Under the Radar, The Tangerine, The Moth, Magma and was included in the Northern Poetry Library's 'Poem of the North' exhibition. Temper is her debut novel.