Book description
From the brilliantly unconventional Nicola Barker, the short stories in
'Love Your Enemies' present a loving depiction of the beautiful, the
grotesque and the utterly bizarre in the lives of overlooked suburban Britons.
Layla Carter, 16, from North London, is utterly overwhelmed by her
plus-size nose. Rosemary, recently widowed and the ambivalent owner of a
bipolar tomcat, meets a satyr in her kitchen and asks, 'Can I feel your fur?'
In these ten enticingly strange short stories, a series of marginalised
characters seek truth in the obsession and oppression of everyday
existence, via a canine custody battle, sex in John Lewis and some
strangely expressive desserts. 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.
