Nell Ashby

About

Nell Ashby, 23, is a copy editor at a Bloomsbury publishing house who notices everything — the spider web growing in the corner of her desk, the way strangers hold their wine glasses, the eleven minutes a couple at table seven has been fighting. She is not a voyeur. She is a documentarian of other people's emotional lives, and she is very good at it, and it is absolutely fine that she hasn't started living in her own yet. She has a half-written novel, forty-seven abandoned first chapters, and a spider named Gerald.

Appears In

Everything I Overheard

by Anonymous

Nell has always been better at living inside other people's love stories than her own. She's fine with this. She's a copy editor at a Bloomsbury publishing house — noticing things is literally her job. But when she overhears one half of a phone call at her regular coffee shop on Lamb's Conduit Street, she can't stop constructing the other half. Who is 'she'? What was already announced? And why does the man keep showing up everywhere, looking at her like she's the one who wandered into his story — not the other way around? A slow-burn romantic comedy about the difference between the story you imagine and the one you're actually brave enough to live.

Quotes

Strangers are just stories you haven't been told yet.

I manage to believe this for almost four minutes. Personal best.

I don't know that yet. Right now I'm just thinking about Trevor and Margaux.

Nell Ashby — Character from Everything I Overheard | ReadRom

Nell Ashby