Book description
Hilarious, poignant and frequently surreal, Small Holdings is a is a
comedy of errors from a neglected corner of everyday life by the
brilliantly unconventional Nicola Barker.
An attractive park in Palmers Green plays host to Phil, a chronically
shy gardener who feels truly at home only with his plants. He and his
gentle colleague Ray, a man with all the sense of a Savoy cabbage, are
tortured by Doug, their imposing and unpredictable supervisor, and a
malevolent one-legged ex-museum curator called Saleem. In love with the
truck-obsessed Nancy, Phil strives nobly to maintain his equilibrium
despite being systematically mystified, brutalised, drugged, derided and
seduced. But when he loses his eyebrows, he decides to fight back.
Nicola Barker lives and works in east London. She was the winner of the
David Higham Prize for Fiction and joint winner of the Macmillan Silver
Pen Award for 'Love Your Enemies', her first collection of stories. Her
second story collection, 'Heading Inland', received the John Llewellyn
Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize. Her novel 'Wide Open' won the IMPAC Prize in
2000, and 'Clear' was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004. She is
one of Granta's 'Best Young British Novelists' of the decade.
