Hodder lands debut novel from Gleam's Bergstrom

Hodder & Stoughton has pre-empted a debut novel from Gleam Titles agent Abigail Bergstrom, an upmarket commercial fiction book she originally submitted under a pseudonym.

Assistant editor Lily Cooper acquired UK and Commonwealth rights for What a Shame from Kate Evans of PFD. Billed as a “dark, funny and immediately intimate” account of a woman in search of peace, it will be released in hardback, audio and e-book in early 2022.

The synopsis states: “She doesn’t want to admit it, but there’s something wrong with Mathilda Manning. It’s not just that she’s been wearing the same pair of black dungarees for three months straight, or that she can’t seem to stop running, or that she’s once again sleeping with the deeply inappropriate Freddie.

“Cast into the grief of a brutal break-up and the death of her father, she’s not moving on. Her friends are adamant she needs a helping hand, flinging her towards various spiritual practices in a quest for healing. But buried memories won’t stay that way forever, and it’s time Mathilda faces up to her past. Through darkly glittering satire, the novel rattles a hornets’ nest of inherited trauma and the prickly heat of female pain in our modern world.”

Bergstrom explained: “I’ve been an editor, an agent and now an author – having my debut novel commissioned feels wonderfully surreal, and it’s a joy to be working with Kate, Lily and the Hodder team. Writing this book has been such a painful, gratifying and ultimately exhilarating experience. I wanted to write a female character who was disarming and relatable in equal measure, a character who would scratch at the madness that lies immediately beneath our skin. One who has both light and dark within them. One who would make me laugh.”

Cooper said: “Within a few pages of What a Shame, I knew I was reading something special. Abigail’s writing is both sharply funny and deeply felt, with that wonderful capacity to break your heart and mend it once again. It’s a book I immediately wanted to press into the hands of all my female friends. Abigail is a tremendously exciting new writer, and I’m thrilled to be launching her debut at Hodder.”

Evans added: “This landed in my inbox at 7 p.m., and I’d already emailed the (then pseudonymous) author twice by midnight. It’s an extremely special book, genuinely funny, beautifully observed, and relentlessly, unflinchingly real. I saw myself, my friends, and countless other women in Mathilda and I know readers will too.”