Doubleday gobbles up ‘stylish’ début novel from Hazell

Doubleday has signed a “stylish” début novel about aspiration, control and appetite, by Lottie Hazell. 

Bobby Mostyn-Owen, commissioning editor, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, to Piglet from Harriet Moore at David Higham Associates. The novel will be published in early 2024. 

The synopsis says: “Piglet is judging the contents of your shopping trolley. She is listening to what you order for lunch and is observing whether the dessert you serve is homemade or snatched from a packet. There isn’t another 31-year-old that takes food more seriously. And who could blame her, with a childhood nickname like that? In just over a fortnight, she is marrying Kit. Kit and his tasteful family present an opportunity for reinvention – when she had been growing up in Derby, this life, this man had been beyond her imagination. But if something looks too good to be true, perhaps it is?” 

Mostyn-Owen said: “There is a moreish canon – from Nigella Lawson to Nora Ephron, Laurie Colwin to M F K Fisher – of women who turn their craft to examining the tangled relationship between control, femininity and food. Piglet is an intense, satisfying novel asking each of its readers to question what we know, really, about the private worlds of those we choose to build our lives with.” 

Hazell added: “I have always been drawn to writing about the bittersweet. In Piglet, I wanted to explore what happens when a delicious life turns sour and probe at the knotty relationship between our bodily appetites. Through Piglet’s own predilection to keep the unsavoury parts of her life private, I hope to invite readers to ask themselves: What does it mean to live a truthful life? What does it mean to be satisfied? I am thrilled to be working with my agent, Harriet Moore, and now my editor Bobby Mostyn-Owen and the Doubleday team, who immediately understood my creative intentions and aims for the novel.”