A refreshingly irreverent novel about art, desire, domesticity, freedom and the intricacies of the 21st-century female experience, from the acclaimed writer Hannah Pittard.

A novelist learns that an unflattering version of herself will appear prominently --- and soon --- in her ex-husband’s debut. For a week, her life continues largely unaffected by the news --- she cooks, runs, teaches, entertains --- but the morning after baking mac ’n’ cheese from scratch for her nephew’s sixth birthday, she wakes up changed. The contentment she’s long enjoyed is gone. In its place: nothing. A remarkably ridiculous midlife crisis ensues, featuring a talking cat and a game called Dead Body.

Steeped in the strangeness of contemporary life and suggestive of expansive metaphoric possibilities, IF YOU LOVE IT, LET IT KILL YOU is a deeply nuanced and disturbingly funny examination of memory, ownership and artistic expression.