If You Love It, Let It Kill You
A Novel
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If You Love It, Let It Kill You
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Narrated by:
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By:
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Hannah Pittard
About this listen
A refreshingly irreverent novel about art, desire, domesticity, freedom, and the intricacies of the twenty-first-century female experience, by the acclaimed writer Hannah Pittard
Divorced and childless by choice, Hana P. has built a cozy life in Lexington, Kentucky, teaching at the university, living with her boyfriend, a fellow academic, and helping raise his pre-teen daughter. Her sister’s sprawling family lives just across the street, and their long-divorced, deeply complicated parents have also recently moved to town.
One day, Hana learns that an unflattering version of herself will appear prominently—and soon—in her ex-husband’s debut novel. For a week, her life continues largely unaffected by the news—she cooks, runs, teaches, entertains—but the morning after baking mac ’n’ cheese from scratch for her nephew’s sixth birthday, she wakes up changed. The contentment she’s long enjoyed is gone. In its place: nothing. A remarkably ridiculous midlife crisis ensues, featuring a talking cat, a visit to the dean’s office, a shadowy figure from the past, a Greek chorus of indignant students whose primary complaints concern Hana’s autofictional narrative, and a game called Dead Body.
Steeped in the subtleties and strangeness of contemporary life, If You Love It, Let It Kill You is a deeply nuanced and disturbingly funny examination of memory, ownership, and artistic expression for readers of Miranda July’s All Fours and Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend.
©2025 by Hannah Pittard. (P)2025 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Critic reviews
“Hannah Pittard’s new novel is utterly compelling. I felt like I was standing beside Hannah while she peered in a mirror, looking for truth (in fiction, where it of course resides), pointing out flaws, but allowing the cracks of beauty to be revealed too. Pittard’s work lets nothing off the hook, and I read the book in one sitting, desperate to know if she—and therefore I—would be all right by the end. I love Hannah Pittard’s dark and squirrelly mind. I’m a huge fan.”—Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful
“Hannah Pittard has always been so adept at delving into the interior, unafraid of what might reside there, able to create stories where the specificity of relationships and family and identity touch you in these unexpected ways. If You Love It, Let It Kill You asserts that it is ‘neither a comedy nor a tragedy but something much worse: real life’ but Pittard and these characters know better. Real life, the strangest place to reside, is where Pittard does the most incredible work.”—Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here
“Hannah Pittard’s If You Love It, Let It Kill You is a masterclass in autofiction: incisive, hilarious, heartbreaking, and mercilessly candid. This novel, its narrator makes clear, is ‘neither a comedy nor a tragedy but something much worse: real life.’ If You Love It, Let It Kill You is Pittard’s most impressive and innovative book yet.”—Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful