Sucker Punch, Scaachi Koul
Sucker Punch, Scaachi Koul
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Sucker Punch
Essays

Author: Scaachi Koul

Narrator: Scaachi Koul

Unabridged: 6 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/04/2025

Synopsis

“Koul reads the audiobook edition of her essays, her performance highlighting her sharp-witted humor and emotional vulnerability.” —Book Riot

This program is read by the author.

The long-awaited follow-up from one of the most original and hilarious voices writing today.

Scaachi Koul’s first book was a collection of raw, perceptive, and hilarious essays reckoning with the issues of race, body image, love, friendship, and growing up the daughter of immigrants. When the time came to start writing her next book, Scaachi assumed she’d be updating her story with essays about her elaborate four-day wedding, settling down to domestic bliss, and continuing her never-ending arguments with her parents. Instead, the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Scaachi’s marriage fell apart, she lost her job, and her mother was diagnosed with cancer.

Sucker Punch is about what happens when the life you thought you’d be living radically changes course, everything you thought you knew about the world and yourself has tilted on its axis, and you have to start forging a new path forward. Scaachi employs her biting wit to interrogate her previous belief that fighting is the most effective tool for progress. She examines the fights she’s had—with her parents, her ex-husband, her friends, online strangers, and herself—all in an attempt to understand when a fight is worth having, and when it's better to walk away.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

About Scaachi Koul

Scaachi Koul is a senior writer for Slate and a cohost of the Ambie Award-winning podcast Scamfluencers. She cohosted the Emmy-nominated Netflix series, Follow This, and her writing has appeared on This American Life, and in The New Yorker, New York, and The Cut. You can also find her in documentaries like Quiet on Set and Pretty Baby. Her bestselling book, One Day We’ll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. You can follow her on Instagram and on her Substack, Hater Nation. She lives in Brooklyn.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Meg

as divorce books go this one was pretty great. and good god anne lamott really does have dreadlocks, what the fuck......more

Goodreads review by Shannon

A personal collection of essays in which Canadian writer Scacchi Koul shares her experiences with divorce, rape, body image, disordered eating, life during the pandemic and more. This was good on audio narrated by the author herself but I'm not sure I liked it quite as much as her first book. Many t......more

Goodreads review by Jillian

Tender, raw, and hilarious, this collection of essays focuses on the author’s life in the midst and aftermath of a divorce. Told in her distinctive voice, many of the essays are snarky and witty, while others are so insightful and moving that they hit like…well, a sucker punch. I absolutely devoured......more

Goodreads review by Nev

I really enjoyed Scaachi Koul’s first book, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, when I read it back in 2017. So I was excited to see that she had another collection of essays coming out. She is again tackling topics like romantic relationships, family, race, and body image. It’s......more

Quotes

“A beautiful, painful, funny, and ultimately inspiring account of a marriage crumbling, told through Scaachi Koul’s distinct voice and trademark sense of humor. Brilliant.”—Jennette McCurdy, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller I’m Glad My Mom Died

“Scaachi Koul's Sucker Punch is an absolute knockout. An instantly essential entry into the modern divorce canon, Koul's collection of essays is packed full of diamond-sharp writing, exemplary wit, eviscerating truths, and—most importantly—a rib-shattering amount of heart. Here is Scaachi Koul at her most vulnerable, while somehow still casually holding onto her rightfully-earned crown as one of America's funniest living writers.”—Isaac Fitzgerald, author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts

“With a sharp wit and even sharper writing, Scaachi Koul writes a compulsively readable memoir that journeys into the dark heart of heterosexual love. This book will have you howling with laughter, weeping with rage, and furiously turning every page. Sucker Punch is an unapologetic story of one woman's fierce fight to keep those beautiful loud, funny, raw, tender, pugilistic pieces of herself in a world that wants to yank them away. This book is a beautiful bruiser.”—Lyz Lenz, author of This American Ex-Wife

“Sucker Punch is a generous and gutting book about marriage and mothers and the inheritances we all carry. Scaachi Koul’s genius here is stacking moments where you’ll burst out laughing, then pulling her own sucker punch: just when your heart is open, she sneaks in a turn that will make you weep. It’s a magic trick every time.”—Elamin Abdelmahmoud, author of Son of Elsewhere

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