Free Therapy

Funny, clever and true, read the unmissable short story collection about modern relationships


Two teenage girls fixate on each other's bodies; a woman encounters an ex and reflects on the women's group that saved her; an older man's buried grief emerges in encounter with a woman driving a 4×4; and a waitress lacks the money to fix an impacted tooth as the cracks in her life begin to show.

Free Therapy takes us into the inner lives of women and men who are versed in the language of therapy, possessed with the self-knowledge needed to change their lives, but finding themselves unwilling to doing so. As her characters try and fail to connect, Rebecca Ivory reveals the ways in which we posture and present, and the insecurities that lie beneath.

Review

Arresting and inventive -- Sally Rooney, author of Normal People

Wincingly funny and winningly honest ― Daily Mail

In her debut short-story collection, Rebecca Ivory has taken all the tiny humiliations of life and made something so precise and articulate that it can feel mortifying to read... A short story collection that feels apt ― Sunday Times

I ate it up in two sittings. Beneath these stories runs a pulsing darkness, a restless humour, a palpable and astute distrust. Here are all the ways we scam each other, but most of all ourselves -- Saba Sams, author of Send Nudes

The stories in Free Therapy are unerring, ferociously original, cooly controlled and queasy with revelation. They live viscerally in you for days afterward -- Colin Barrett, author of Homesickness

Prepare to feel the hot wind of humiliation, via a series of vivid short stories. This debut collection from a smart young writer turns a keen eye on uncertain and untrustworthy relationships ― Daily Telegraph

About the Author

Rebecca Ivory was born in 1993 and is a writer based in Dublin. Her short fiction has appeared in the Stinging Fly, Banshee, Tangerine and Fallow Media. In 2020, she was awarded a Literature Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland. Free Therapy is her debut.