Give Me Everything You've Got

A seductive modern gothic novel following a promising young filmmaker during one sun-bleached July at a famous director’s summer home

In the midst of an unrelenting heatwave, up-and-coming filmmaker Ruby arrives at the summer home of her idol. Ellen, an iconoclastic feminist director known for mentoring other women, has offered Ruby a room of her own while she finishes her screenplay. Hyped as the next big thing, producers are clamouring for a “female story” mined from Ruby’s trauma, and her deadline is fast approaching.

When she arrives in the countryside, Ellen’s house emerges like something out of a dream—grand and imposing, surrounded by sprawling gardens and a shimmering swimming pool. But tension thrums beneath the picture-perfect surface. Ellen’s reputation is under fire after she’s accused of appropriating a story that wasn’t hers to tell. Meanwhile, Ellen’s mercurial twenty-something daughter Lara lounges by the pool under the blistering sun, drawing her mother’s latest houseguest towards her like a moth to a flame.

Trapped between scorched empty fields and waiting for the heat to break, Ruby’s aspirational summer of artistic retreat spirals into an all-consuming affair. Even the house itself begins to feel haunted, and Ruby has the unnerving sensation that she’s not the first promising young woman brought here to fall under its spell.

Hot to the touch, Imogen Crimp’s Give Me Everything You’ve Got is a spellbinding fever dream, exploring the dark corners of ambition, exploitation, and what it takes to be a woman artist.