Cafés

‘Pester’s second collection builds into a meditation on the nature of desire and disappointment. Comic timing remains a strength, as does her linguistic flexibility, wielding language as a weapon in the face of exploitative working conditions, endless monthly direct debits…. Ambitious and inviting, this confident collection confirms Fitzcarraldo’s entry in the arena of contemporary poetry.’
— Rowland Bagnall, Guardian

‘Holly Pester’s second poetry collection, Cafés, offers a surreal meditation on the unofficial office that many writers could not live without. Whether finding beauty between the butter smears, smiles in plug-socket scrambles, or philosophical revelations between strands of hair, Pester’s poetic world is never a dull place to be. Written from the perspective of a narrator who likens themself to a “cartoon cat that can’t stop wisecracking”, Cafés is one of the most fun – sometimes farcical – collections I’ve read all year.’
— Jade Cuttle, Observer

‘Pester has a knack of invoking a strange music that combines banal corporate-speak, poetic fragment and moments of rhythmic fluidity…. Pester’s ear for these things has been apparent since her first few books, and she continues to push herself and her readers into embracing new ways of thinking and new forms of writing. Her work is full of a giddy richness in both its concept and execution, and Cafés is impressive in its commitment to the bit. Few writers would attempt a 125-page poem (or is it 125 poems?) about cafés; very few would excel in the way Pester does here. Cafés can be simultaneously read as an evocative collage of the parameters of leisure and work, or as one person’s unnatural obsession with Café Rouge. The reader suffers in neither regard.’
— Andrew Spragg, Poetry Review

‘Holly Pester’s café is a place to sink into the soft leather couches, eavesdrop, work and dream: a waiting room both strange and familiar, full of spillages (of coffee) and slippages (of language). A public space or a place to hide; to meet friends and strangers or to be alone; Pester’s brilliance builds this café up and invites us in to linger.’
— Francesca Wade, author of Gertrude Stein: an Afterlife

‘Holly Pester makes the world sing. The song is written by Victoria Wood, and it’s a happy-sad song about utopia. Figured not as a distant place but as a way of being with people and things, that might also be called friendship, that might also be called poetry. She reminds us that poetry is a social activity, an expression of faith in the possibility of connection – with other people, with the world, with happiness – that feels, in our historical moment, like a form of resistance.’ 
― Ben Eastham, author of The Floating World

‘Romance! Revolution! Happy work! Salad! In this ingenious and devastatingly funny work, the perky smooth surfaces of contemporary capitalism are vivisected to show fleshy conflicts and writhing contradictions. On life’s menu can we actually pick our options, rather than just onions? Can we dare to experience one another outside of the transaction? Cafés is a striking and vital work of dreaming and dream interpretations, a clarion call for interruption that will “make thoughts paddle”. Enter the café, scooch closer and awaken your critique!’
― Lila Matsumoto, author of Two Twin Pipes Sprout Water

‘Pester is pinpoint in her choice of state-of-the- nation detail, the mock Tudor windows and Café Rouge forming part of the Great British simulacrum. The political violence and despair leak out between the architecture, like a damaged subconscious…. Pester’s ear for these things has been apparent since her first few books, and she continues to push herself and her readers into embracing new ways of thinking and new forms of writing. Her work is full of a giddy richness in both its concept and execution, and Cafés is impressive in its commitment to the bit…. Cafés demand we revisit that sense of the possible, and see how we might reinvigorate our more utopian impulses.’
— Andrew Spragg, Poetry Review

‘Holly Pester is one of my favourite contemporary poets and Cafés is her strangest and maybe best book (so far). Narrative fragments emerge and recede, characters coalesce and dissolve, sentences threaten to topple their own grammar, and the subject matter shifts near-constantly – from work to love to friendship to aging to art. Pester has a special ability to thwart literal sense while sustaining emotional sense, even when the feeling is subtle. Like a café, the book makes space for the pleasures of barely structured time: time spent in reflection, conversation, and maybe even hard work, but without an overarching aim that’s clear to oneself. A simpler book would symptomatize such pleasures, but Cafés meets them openly, with ambivalence and love.’
— Steven Zultanski, author of Help

Praise for The Lodgers:

‘Holly Pester is a genius and The Lodgers gets into everything that matters.’
― Kate Briggs, author of The Long Form 

‘There is no one better than Holly Pester at communicating the eerie, sometimes hilarious and often hallucinatory experience of modern precarity. This is a novel for the age and for generation rent: a captivating and unforgettable account of how economic circumstance can lead to a feeling of being only half alive.’
― Nathalie Olah, author of Bad Taste 

‘With tang and pith in every sentence, The Lodgers speaks to a generational epidemic of rootlessness and porous selfhood with vital wit and utter originality.’
― AK Blakemore, author of The Glutton 

‘A sad strange lyrical story of shame and displacement but whose strength will not let you go.’
― Sheena Patel, author of I’m a Fan 

Holly Pester is a writer and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre, University of Essex. Her books and works include Ecloques for Idle Workers (BBC Radio and Distance No Object, 2018), Comic Timing (Granta, 2021), which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, and The Lodgers (Granta, 2024).