In Extremis by Tim Parks
In Extremis is one of the most implacable, but also one of the funniest, novels about death and family you will ever read. Thomas knows there is something he needs to say to his mother before she dies.
The best novel I read this year was Tim Parks’s In Extremis, a frantic and minutely observed comedy of family, marriage, life and deathThere is something in the synaptic twitch of Parks’s prose that brings us closer to the pressures and rhythms of a lived life than the work of any other contemporary writer I can think of -- Mike McCormack * New Statesman, Best Books of 2017 *
Nobody tells this sort of story better than Tim Parks, who has a gift, unrivalled among his contemporaries, for capturing the sheer rapidity with which unconnected trains of thought hurtle round and round in the human brain. The novel is a tour de force of high-voltage storytelling * Mail on Sunday *
Head and shoulders above so many of the books turned out by similar writers... Parks, by being funny, explodes all that. This is a wonderfully written novel that draws us close to Thomas in spite of who he is, not, as a lesser author would have had it, because of how he’s been carefully curated to be. -- Kirsty Gunn * Guardian *
Tim Parks is a hugely talented writer, who deserves to be a good deal more celebrated than he is… thematically taut and compulsively paced. * Sunday Times *
Tim Parks’s brilliant new comedy is an invigorating twist on the male mid-life crisis novel… A very funny, very clever novel that shows with tremendous verve how life is so often a beleaguering collision between the absurd and the profound. * Daily Mail *
A frantic and minutely observed comedy of family, marriage, life and death. There is something in the synaptic twitch of Parks’s prose that brings us closer to the pressures and rhythms of a lived life than the work of any other contemporary writer I can think of -- Mike McCormack * New Statesman *
Blazingly funny, full of squirmy physical comedy and weaselly shilly-shallying -- Anthony Cummins * Observer *
Nobody tells this sort of story better than Tim Parks, who has a gift, unrivalled among his contemporaries, for capturing the sheer rapidity with which unconnected trains of thought hurtle round and round in the human brain. The novel is a tour de force of high-voltage storytelling * Mail on Sunday *
Head and shoulders above so many of the books turned out by similar writers... Parks, by being funny, explodes all that. This is a wonderfully written novel that draws us close to Thomas in spite of who he is, not, as a lesser author would have had it, because of how he’s been carefully curated to be. -- Kirsty Gunn * Guardian *
Tim Parks is a hugely talented writer, who deserves to be a good deal more celebrated than he is… thematically taut and compulsively paced. * Sunday Times *
Tim Parks’s brilliant new comedy is an invigorating twist on the male mid-life crisis novel… A very funny, very clever novel that shows with tremendous verve how life is so often a beleaguering collision between the absurd and the profound. * Daily Mail *
A frantic and minutely observed comedy of family, marriage, life and death. There is something in the synaptic twitch of Parks’s prose that brings us closer to the pressures and rhythms of a lived life than the work of any other contemporary writer I can think of -- Mike McCormack * New Statesman *
Blazingly funny, full of squirmy physical comedy and weaselly shilly-shallying -- Anthony Cummins * Observer *
Born in Manchester, Tim Parks grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. He lives in Milan.
Parks is the acclaimed author of novels, non-fiction and essays, including Europa, A Season with Verona, Teach Us to Sit Still, Italian Ways and Italian Life. He has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and has won many awards for both his work in English and his translations from the Italian, which include works by Alberto Moravia, Italo Calvino, Roberto Calasso, Antonio Tabucchi and Niccolò Machiavelli.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781911215707 |
| ISBN 10 | 1911215701 |
| Title | In Extremis |
| Author | Tim Parks |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2017-03-23 |
| Number of pages | 352 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |