Use the Words you Have

Praise for USE THE WORDS YOU HAVE 

‘I love what this novel does with language, moving across and around words as people have to when they are outside their mother tongue. I love its glimpse of the possibility that a young girl’s first experience of sex could be tender and hot. It’s a grown-up story about adolescence, difficulty, compromise, and how to enjoy the world anyway – read it like you’d eat a melting ice cream.’ Daisy Hildyard, author of Emergency and The Second Body 

‘I’ve never read a love story like it. 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 Durastani. But Campanello is entirely her own here. Absorbing, lyrical, and memorable.’ Jason Allen-Paisant, author of The Possibility of Tenderness and Self-Portrait as Othello

‘A moving meditation on the capacity of language and love to shape us. This book is a sensory experience, saturated in sun and salt water, drenched in heat and longing.’ Jessica Andrews, author of Milk Teeth and Saltwater

‘Use the Words You Have is like memory itself, like the memory of love. Composed in a delicate, aching space between nostalgia and desire, between the past and eternity, it shimmers like light on a sea recollected across decades.’ Rob Doyle, author of Threshold and Here Are The Young Men

‘It's been a complete pleasure to read this in my tiny brick yard, nowhere near the sea. The restraint, clarity and precision of the writing is faultless.’ Joanna Walsh, author of Vertigo,Worlds from the Word's End and Break*up 

‘Campanello tells us a love story that consecrates exquisite everyday pleasures… Her prose is full of sensuous delight and poetic inventiveness, reminding us of the quiet glories of a life worth living. This novel is a gift.’ Naomi Booth, author of raw content, Exit Management and Sealed

‘A beautiful coming of age of the artist novel – on the utility and limits of language and how the body speaks for us when words fall away.’ Michael Amherst, author of The Boyhood of Cain

‘This is a novel you'll want to devour and savour, all at once. It's a love story, an anti-love story, a reckoning with youth, and something of a magic trick. Campanello's quietly elegant prose captures the intersection between thought and feeling in a completely unique way.’ Clare Fisher, author of All the Good Things and How The Light Gets In

‘Use The Words You Have is a moreish romance that makes contact. It is a deep and curious exploration of what it’s like to live in a new tongue, a brilliant account of the power of language to remake identity, and a plunge towards the source of poetry.’ Caleb Klaces, author of Fatherhood and Away From Me

‘An authentic, elegant and addictive account of a Breton love affair with shades of Sylvia Plath's prose and Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.’ Bruce Omar Yates, author of The Muslim Cowboy 

‘I loved it. A fervid depiction of a burgeoning womanhood – the romance of youth, self-definition through loss – so movingly told.’ Rose Cleary, author of How To Be a French Girl

‘Liv Tyler’s Stealing Beauty meets Marguerite Duras’ The Lover. Sun soaked, sexy, profound. It’s my top summer read.’ Abi Curtis, author of The Headland

‘Use The Words You Have is a skilful novel questioning autonomy and want, the potentials and pitfalls within language and how we narrativise our lives.’ Tom Branfoot, author of Boar and This Is Not An Epiphany

‘I've never read anything like Use the Words You Have’… I loved the prose and its rich, cumulative patterns. Miraculous writing.’ Francesca Bratton, author of Stronger Than Death

‘Dripping with desire, Use the Words You Have mirrors the tension between aspiration and expression found in adolescence. It is a poignant tale of discovery and becoming – an intimate window into a journey of self-actualization.’ Justine Ludwig, Executive Director, Creative Time