Lurid & Cute by Adam Thirlwell
Shortlisted for the 2015 Goldsmiths Prize This yarn takes place in the suburbs of a giant city. In Brasilia they’re coming off their night shift, in Tokyo they’re having their first whisky sours – that’s what’s happening elsewhere in the world when our hero wakes up. Together with his wife and dog, he lives at home with his parents. He has had the good education and, until recently, the good job. In other words, the juggernaut of meaning was not parked heavily on our hero’s lawn. But then the lurid overtakes him – and whether this lurid tone is caused by our hero’s new unemployment, or his feelings for a girl who is not his wife, or the return of his old friend Hiro, it’s hard to say. What’s definite is that a chain of events begins that feels to those inside it, narcotic and neurotic, like one long and terrible descent – complete with lies, deceit, and chicanery; one orgy, one brothel, and a series of firearms disputes. While if you start to notice minute doubles and repeats, or wonder if what you took as some trick of perspective might in fact be a kink of reality, perhaps that shouldn't be so much of a surprise... For very possibly this suburban noir as the story of a woebegone and global generation – and our hero, the sweetest narrator in world literature, may well also be the most fearsome.
"A dazzlingly imaginative comic noir" * Financial Times *
"The narrator of Thirlwell’s latest book may be his best creation yet… The way time works here – pulled and stretched, sped up and sped down – testifies to Thirlwell’s mastery as a storyteller… Impossible to put down" * New York Times Book Review *
"An extravagantly talented novelist" * Evening Standard *
"Reading Thirlwell is like going into the happiest, cholesterol-clogged form of literary existenceWhether he’s writing about the decline and fall of our civilization or a guy who thinks he’s accidentally killed his lover, the prose bounces us into a state of fulfilled happiness and wonder" -- Gary Shteyngart * Salon *
"Reads like a collaboration between Kundera and Murakami to adapt SJ Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep or Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl into post-modernist fiction" * Guardian *
"The narrator of Thirlwell’s latest book may be his best creation yet… The way time works here – pulled and stretched, sped up and sped down – testifies to Thirlwell’s mastery as a storyteller… Impossible to put down" * New York Times Book Review *
"An extravagantly talented novelist" * Evening Standard *
"Reading Thirlwell is like going into the happiest, cholesterol-clogged form of literary existenceWhether he’s writing about the decline and fall of our civilization or a guy who thinks he’s accidentally killed his lover, the prose bounces us into a state of fulfilled happiness and wonder" -- Gary Shteyngart * Salon *
"Reads like a collaboration between Kundera and Murakami to adapt SJ Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep or Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl into post-modernist fiction" * Guardian *
Adam Thirlwell is the author of two novels, Politics and The Escape; a novella, Kapow!; and a project including an essay-book – which won a Somerset Maugham Award – and a compendium of translations edited for McSweeney’s. His work is translated into thirty languages. He has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780224089135 |
| ISBN 10 | 0224089137 |
| Title | Lurid & Cute |
| Author | Adam Thirlwell |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2015-01-29 |
| Number of pages | 368 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for The Goldsmiths Prize 2015 (UK) |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |