The Art of Not Having It All ― One Woman's Guide to Love, Men, and Other Everyday Disasters

A hilarious guide to not having it all, with vague instructions on what to do when you’ve dropped all the balls you ought to have kept in the air, perfect for fans of Caitlin Moran

Does an exciting weekend for you mean scrubbing all the grouting in your bathroom with a toothbrush? Do you ponder marrying the Albanian builder who has just fitted alcove shelving because he's brought you more happiness in three days than your useless ex-boyfriend brought you in three years? Do you write to-do lists that need paginating, and include items such as "re-mortgage house, get pregnant, climb Kilimanjaro"? Welcome to Melissa Kite's life. If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, clearly you too are a desperate single woman trying to survive in the modern world. If not, congratulations: you will have a good laugh reading this book.

When Melissa first started writing a column in the Spectator magazine, she had no idea there was anyone else out there remotely like her. Nearly every other woman she knew seemed to be heroically juggling work and family life. By contrast, Melissa felt as though, in the fluttering mass of yellow Post-it notes on her fridge there was one that read, “Don’t forget to get married and have kids,” which had got covered in shopping lists, dry-cleaner receipts and waste collection schedules. In this hilarious, poignant memoir, Melissa details her adventures in not having it all, from her epic struggle to free a chubby angelfish which wedged itself in a plastic log, to her escape from a French holiday with her boyfriend gone terribly wrong.

MELISSA KITE is a British writer and journalist, and contributing editor of the Spectator magazine for which she pens a weekly column called Real Life. She also writes for the Daily Mail and Guardian newspapers. She began her career as a reporter in Northern Ireland for the Press Association news agency and went on to become political correspondent of The London Times, then the Deputy Political Editor of The Sunday Telegraph. As a journalist, she has reported from all over the world and has featured in numerous magazines including GQ. She appears regularly as a commentator on television and radio. She lives in London with her spaniel, Cydney.