Elaine by Will Self

Elaine by Will Self

The Booker-shortlisted author of>Umbrella writes his most American novel yet--a brilliant portrait of a 1950s housewife, based on the life of the author's mother, and an exploration of sexual freedom and sublimated desire

Will Self is one of the most inimitable contemporary writers in the English language, dubbed the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation by>The Guardian. In this brilliantly conceived new novel Self turns his forensic eye and technicolor imagination to the troubled life of his mother, Elaine. Standing by the mailbox outside 1100 Hemlock Street in Ithaca, New York, Elaine thinks of her husband and child inside her house and wonders: is this . . . it? As she begins to push back against the strictures of her life in 1950s America, she undertakes a disastrous affair that places her marriage to an Ivy League academic and former Communist Party member in peril. Based on the intimate diaries Self's mother kept for over forty years, Elaine is a writer's attempt to reach the almost unimaginable realm: a parent's interior life prior to his own existence. Perhaps the first work of auto-oedipal fiction, Elaine shows Will Self working in an exciting new dimension, employing his stylistic talents to tremendous effect.

Self, Will: - Will Self is the author of many novels and books of nonfiction, including Great Apes; The Book of Dave; How the Dead Live, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year; The Butt, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction; and Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He lives in South London.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780802163530
ISBN 10	080216353X
Title	Elaine
Author	Will Self
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
Year published	2024-09-17
Number of pages	304
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.