Book description
The first novel from the brilliantly unconventional Nicola Barker is a
tale of gambling, allergies, music and dogs, set in some of London's
less scenic locations.
Chance meetings between its cast of eccentric individuals - Ruby the
bookie's cashier, violently disturbed (and disturbing) Vincent, Samantha
the would-be cabaret singer, wilfully sickly Sylvia and Little Buttercup
the never-quite-made-it greyhound - result in the unlikeliest of
couples; and there's always the risk that it could all work out
disastrously as characters select each other and try or don't try to
make winning combinations. But, as Ruby, the story's soft-centred
heroine, observes: 'Losing, that's the whole point of the gamble.'
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.
