Book description
The hilarious Man Booker-longlisted novel from the author of 'Darkmans'
and 'The Burley Cross Postbox Theft'.
2006 is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Tiger
Woods' reputation is entirely untarnished and the English Defence League
does not exist. But storm-clouds are gathering above the bar of Luton's
less-than-exclusive Thistle Hotel. Among those caught up in the
unfolding drama are a man who's survived cancer seven times, a woman
priest with an unruly fringe, the troubled family of a notorious local
fascist, an interfering barmaid with three E's at A-level but a PhD in
bullshit, a free-thinking Muslim sex therapist and his considerably more
pious wife. But at the heart of every intrigue and the bottom of every
mystery is the repugnantly charismatic Stuart Ransom - a golfer in
free-fall. 'Barker is ostensibly a comic writer, and is indeed
snort-inducingly funny at times … What's more - just about uniquely in
this country - she is thinking intelligently and critically about how to
make [a realist] tradition work in the present day. But it's not for her
virtue that she deserves to be read; it's for pleasure.' Keith Miller,
Daily Telegraph
'There are moments when Stuart Ransom has the vulgar bravura of John
Self in Martin Amis's 'Money' … but Barker is unique and it's for the
pleasures of her style that one reads her.' Kate Kellaway, Observer
'Dementedly imaginative … stomach-turningly hilarious … What she has
written is a state of the nation novel of the sort Dickens and Hogarth
might have jointly conjured up had they ever visited Luton.' Michael
Prodger, Financial Times
'Barker is at once sui generis and the Google-age inheritor of a
tradition. The first third or so of the book gives us a Chaucerian
sketch show sequence of comic set-pieces … then it takes a left turn
into Shakespeare territory' Sam Leith, Guardian
'Barker captures - and lovingly distorts - both the rhythms and
banality of language. She is, as it were, Harold Pinter on crack' Justin
Cartwright, The Spectator
'A specialist in likeable British grotesques … wackier siblings to
those in Hilary Mantel's 'Beyond Black'. 'The Yips' cannot be faulted
for its free-flowing imagination' Tom Cox, Independent. Nicola
Barker's eight previous novels include 'Darkmans' (short-listed for the
2007 Booker and Ondaatje prizes, and winner of the Hawthornden), 'Wide
Open' (winner of the 2000 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award) and 'Clear'
(long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2004). She has also written two
prize-winning collections of short-stories, and her work has been
translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in east London.
