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AUGUST 2019 
Erica is 17 and in her last year of high school. Donny is 42 and everywhere – in her yoga class, at German Club, in her parents’ spare room . . .
The story of a young woman who finds herself subject to the gravitational field of a charismatic man, The Boyfriend is a cautionary tale about blindly accepting traditional ‘love’ narratives.
This clear-eyed, dismaying and often hilarious examination of sexual desire, trauma and growth is a remarkable debut and a perfect novel for our time.
‘The Boyfriend is original, chilling, funny – a slow burn that ends up being white-hot.’ —Emily Perkins
‘Cutting, brave, The Boyfriend is a novel that stays in the bloodstream to haunt and unsettle long after reading.’ —Tracey Slaughter
Cover photography by Russell Kleyn.
Laura Southgate was born in Wellington in 1978. She holds an MA in English from the University of Auckland and in 2018 gained an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. She won the Adam Foundation Prize for The Boyfriend, which is her first book.