Jonathan Cape pre-empts Pountney’s ‘exquisite’ debut

Jonathan Cape has pre-empted Miranda Pountney’s debut novel How to Be Somebody Else, scheduled for publication in February 2024.

Željka Marošević, editorial director, pre-empted world all-language rights from Anna Webber at United Agents. Jonathan Cape acquired the novel on a partial while the author was still finishing her creative writing MA at Bath Spa, where she was taught by Tessa Hadley and Samantha Harvey.

How to Be Somebody Else is described as an “uncoming of age in New York City”. Its synopsis reads: “On the surface Dylan has achieved the impossible – a life in New York, eight years of making this stick. And yet it is not the thing she’d imagined – but what had she imagined? When she walks out of her career, then apartment, and into a house-sit for an artist she’s never met, she does not tell her friends, her parents back in England, or Matt, her boyfriend, living on the West Coast.

“Job-free, rent-free, she’ll make good on her book, herself, other things too, she’s thinking, when her neighbour Kate shows up and invites her to a party. There she meets Gabe, who happens to be married to Kate but insists, ’it’s not a thing’. The affair that follows consumes her and she begins to consider what is fixed and what is variable. Can a person be both? Is Gabe the thing he seems? Is she? As spring turns to summer, her experiments in living test loyalties and boundaries until an unexpected encounter between the two couples forces her to confront her future.”

Pountney said: “I couldn’t be happier to be joining Jonathan Cape’s list, which is home to so many writers I admire. Their very early support and brilliant editorial guidance has given me the space and confidence to write a book I’m proud of.”

Marošević said: “How to Be Somebody Else contains some of the most stylish, sleek and exquisite writing I’ve encountered in a long while. It is an uncoming of age about letting go of the life you have built and embracing uncertainty. It’s so smart on friendship, desire and work, and it’s also a perfect New York novel, about its promise and reality.”