Launching an intelligent, perceptive new voice in fiction, Shelf Life is the exquisite, heart-wrenching story of a woman rebuilding herself on her own terms. Ruth is thirty years old. She works as a nurse in a care home and her fiance has just broken up with her. The only thing she has left of him is their shopping list for the upcoming week. And so she uses that list to tell her story. Starting with six eggs, and working through spaghetti and strawberries, and apples and tea bags, Ruth discovers that her identity has been crafted from the people she serves; her patients, her friends, and, most of all, her partner of ten years. Without him, she needs to find out - with conditioner and single cream and a lot of sugar - who she is when she stands alone.