I’m Amandine, an art history student at the Courtauld Institute in London as well as a publishing assistant here at Guts! After reading Deborah Price’s The Peanut Factory, I fell in love with Guts Publishing and their mission to uncover daring stories about real people and their lives. ‘Unprecedented’, I believe I had originally called it.
Our upcoming memoir, Dear Mr Andrews, Lotte Latham’s debut, is far from the exception. Candid, exuberant, and wonderfully unapologetic, Lotte’s unique narrative voice provides an unlikely telling of hard-hitting events set against the backdrop of the sugar dating scene and the sex industry. As the first reader of Dear Mr Andrews, I was immediately charmed by Lotte’s empowering honesty and her intent to recount her journey in an objective light, unveiling explicit and difficult themes with compelling simplicity.
Since my first reading, we’ve had some outstanding reviews come in. Michael Turner, poet and author of The Pornographer’s Poem said:
‘Some of our best-loved books are never what they purport to be. Cooking in a Bedsitter (1961) is more than a collection of recipes, just as Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) is less than a quest for self-improvement. I would say something similar of Dear Mr Andrews (2023), which is neither an epistolary nor a confessional but a Millennial’s epic journey through the precarious landscape of the 21st century’s geo-digital economy.
Written in swift, clear-eyed prose, Latham’s wry, insightful narrator is an erotic anthropologist who has managed to convince this late-born Boomer that if you can’t be honest, at least be true. An important distinction, one that harkens back to de Sade and returns to us generationally through writers like Colette, Anaïs Nin, Angela Carter, and Tamara Faith Berger. I would respectfully add Lotte Latham to that list. Dear Mr Andrews is a remarkable debut.’
Karla Linn Merrifield, poet and author of My Body the Guitar said:
‘Let your inner voyeur loose for this bodacious memoir! Meet a sugar baby and her many daddies up close in a saga told to our Mr Andrews, Lotte Latham’s confessor, her muse. Lotte is enchanting company, exuberant, ever frank, wise in her self-reflective whirl. Her lively voice comes alive; she’s a fine stylist of sparkling prose. Go ahead, take a deep peek. She’ll show you “how much loneliness there is in the world,” among so many life lessons. This book is Lotte’s clarion call for compassion.’
We are honoured and grateful to have the support and endorsement of these writers.
Dear Mr Andrews will be released on 18 January 2023. Pre-orders are available here: gutspublishing.com/product-page/dear-mr-andrews
Goldsmiths College will be hosting an online event on 2 February to celebrate the book launch. Please sign up to our newsletter for updates. We’d love to see you there!
xx
Amandine Lefevre
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