The Typing Lady
And Other Fictions
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.
The Typing Lady
Narrated by:
Ruth Ozeki, Jeff Ebner, George Newbern, Akie Kotabe
Pre-order Now for £14.05
-
Narrated by:
-
Ruth Ozeki
-
Jeff Ebner
-
George Newbern
-
Akie Kotabe
-
By:
-
Ruth Ozeki
Summary
In this spirited and emotionally resonant collection, award-winning novelist Ruth Ozeki turns her singular gaze to the short story, exploring childhood ambition, youthful desire, midlife reinvention, and the unsparing clarity of old age. With her distinctive blend of wit, warmth, and deep humanity, she brings us eleven richly imagined stories of characters standing at life’s thresholds—grappling with faded ideals, evolving identities, and the inevitable compromises that shape a life.
A college student falls for her professor and learns to transmute longing into language. A disquieted husband watches with tenderness and unease as the ghost of his wife’s ambition roams the woods outside their home. A long-deceased Beat poet hijacks the mind of a young publishing assistant during a sales meeting, railing against the state of modern literature. A curious grandmother creates a fake online dating profile to spy on her granddaughter’s romantic life—and sets in motion a deception she can’t control.
Spanning eras and geographies—from a New England college town in the 1970s to downtown Manhattan in the 1990s to a moss-covered Pacific Northwest island during the early pandemic—The Typing Lady is an electrifying meditation on the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we abandon, and the stories we become. Threaded with the tactile ephemera of writing—typewriters, letters, manuscripts, and disappearing ink—the book reveals how we record ourselves in language, and how language, over time, records us in return.
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c
Critic reviews
A Time Most Anticipated Book of the Year
“Delightful, moving, and profound, The Typing Lady is a book of love stories of every kind. It is a book of great treasures.”
—Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Heart the Lover
“In 11 stories, the acclaimed Ruth Ozeki moves gracefully among characters, between decades and locales, skewering power dynamics in academia and the writer’s craft—‘collaborations between people who read and people who type‘—with mordant wit.”
—Time, “The 36 Most Anticipated Books of 2026”
“Longing and loss sometimes lead to understanding in this reflective collection of 11 short pieces. . . . [Ozeki shows] warmth toward the fiction-making process—and her characters. . . . Tender, mysterious, and moving.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“The act of writing—on keyboards, in letters, even with disappearing ink—connects Ozeki’s tales as bearing witness to lives lived and as records for readers now and to come.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Ozeki’s atmospheric tales radiate with intelligence and wit.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Delightful, moving, and profound, The Typing Lady is a book of love stories of every kind. It is a book of great treasures.”
—Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Heart the Lover
“In 11 stories, the acclaimed Ruth Ozeki moves gracefully among characters, between decades and locales, skewering power dynamics in academia and the writer’s craft—‘collaborations between people who read and people who type‘—with mordant wit.”
—Time, “The 36 Most Anticipated Books of 2026”
“Longing and loss sometimes lead to understanding in this reflective collection of 11 short pieces. . . . [Ozeki shows] warmth toward the fiction-making process—and her characters. . . . Tender, mysterious, and moving.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“The act of writing—on keyboards, in letters, even with disappearing ink—connects Ozeki’s tales as bearing witness to lives lived and as records for readers now and to come.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Ozeki’s atmospheric tales radiate with intelligence and wit.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
No reviews yet