Enter our contest to win a copy of The Gospel According to Sydney Welles. We have five copies to give away.

Elizabeth Gilbert meets Jennifer Weiner in this hilarious comedy of errors starring resident Los Angeleno Sydney Welles. Sydney seems to have it all—a lucrative career, a comfortable life, and a man who looks good on paper—until the Catholic Church, looking to repair some serious image problems, approaches the ad agency she works for to create a positive campaign. Sydney, told by her boss it’s her account to lose, stumbles through the novel trying to figure out how to sell religion to a soulless society. She begins a one-sided argument with the Lord himself via riotous, pleading e-mails, all the time asking why He/She had to enter her neat, secular life and make such a mess of it.

 

Complicating things are her best friend Anna’s on-again, off-again wedding; the disturbingly handsome priest serving as the church’s liaison; and Jake, the new guy, who looks good in real life but comes equipped with all the real-life complications. Susi Rajah’s wickedly funny debut novel introduces an unforgettable new voice in fiction and gives us a ribald, self-deprecating young woman who eventually discovers that love requires even more faith than religion.

 

Susi Rajah is the author of How to Spot a Bastard by His Star Sign and I’m Not a Feminist, But… She worked in advertising for many years, and wrote this novel in Los Angeles before moving to New York City, where she now lives.

 

In my twenties, I thought sex and career would solve everything. At thirty, I thought marriage would. Later I tried motherhood, therapy, and then divorce. At forty, I decided to renovate.

 

A witty, brazen look at what it will take for the modern woman to call herself happy, from the internationally acclaimed author of Wifework and The Mask of Motherhood.

With all the choices available to today’s women, why don’t they more feel fulfilled? What Women Want Next is Susan Maushart’s meditation—by turns profound and laugh-out-loud funny—on that central dilemma of postfeminist life. At one point she had it all, so why wasn’t she happy? With What Women Want Next, Maushart combines research with personal history in a dynamic attempt to answer this question.

 

Feminism may have led women to life’s banquet table, but the meal they make of it is up to them. How to balance life and work, sex and sleep, child care and self-care? And why has women’s guilt—that glass ceiling of the soul—become the biggest barrier they face? What Women Want Next is the first book to look at the spectrum of a woman’s life and attempt to demonstrate how she can shape her own destiny throughout all its stages.

 

Susan Maushart was born in New York and has lived in Australia since 1985. She is a senior research associate at Curtin University, and a columnist for the Australian Magazine. She lives in Perth with her three children.

 

To enter, simply tell us who famously asked the question 'what do women want?'
Click here to read an excerpt from What Do Women Want?