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Use the Words You Have

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Pub Date Jun 23 2025 | Archive Date Nov 15 2025
Somesuch | Somesuch Editions

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Description

I wonder if you’ve had a love like this? If there was a love you had one day long ago, a love that you tell stories about. Do you have the words to write it?

A literary romance like no other – Kimberly Campanello’s debut novel unfurls over a long hot Breton summer as American student K embarks on a love affair with a young local man.

Barred from using English by their French Honors programme, the Americans’ identities flicker and fade. Yet for K this dissolution opens space for profound transformation.

Heady and poetic, erotic and intelligent, Use the Words You Have is a coming-of-age tale that reveals how coming-of-age – at its pinnacle – means coming alive. Alive to touch and taste, pleasure and ecstasy. To the sea, the sun and eternity.

I wonder if you’ve had a love like this? If there was a love you had one day long ago, a love that you tell stories about. Do you have the words to write it?

A literary romance like no other –...


Advance Praise

'I love what this novel does with language... Read it like you'd eat a melting ice cream.'—Daisy Hildyard

‘A moving meditation on the capacity of language and love to shape us… saturated in sun and salt water, drenched in heat and longing.’—Jessica Andrews

‘Eroticism here is as much about discovering another’s body as it is about discovering the body through language. It’s Rimbaud, it’s Hélène Cixous, even a touch of Claudia Durastanti. But Campanello is entirely her own here.’—Jason Allen-Paisant

‘It’s been a complete pleasure to read this… The restraint, clarity and precision of the writing is faultless.’—Joanna Walsh

‘Composed in a delicate, aching space between nostalgia and desire, between the past and eternity, Use the Words You Have shimmers like light on a sea recollected across decades.’—Rob Doyle

'I love what this novel does with language... Read it like you'd eat a melting ice cream.'—Daisy Hildyard

‘A moving meditation on the capacity of language and love to shape us… saturated in sun and...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781999789268
PRICE £9.99 (GBP)
PAGES 208

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