Liver
A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Liver - Booker prize nominee Will Self's extraordinary examination of lives out of control
'Magnificent, horribly funny' The Times
'Brilliant. One of the most manically imaginative writers at work today' Financial Times
'This is what Self does best: snap-shots of decline and high-concept satires of the "slapstick of addiction" ' Sunday Telegraph
'The best work of Self's I've read' Literary Review
From Will Self, the Booker shortlisted author of Umbrella and the pre-eminent chronicler of our neuroses and our times, Liver is a moving, hilarious and scabrous collection of stories about egos, appetites and addictions. It will be adored by readers of Martin Amis, Irvine Welsh and David Mitchell.
'Peculiar, subtle, affecting, humane . . . busy with stylistic experiment, high-concept in-jokes, verbal impasto and flights of fancy. Tremendous fun' Guardian
'No one can revel in the disease and decay of humanity like Self' Metro
'Self is a superb stylist and the laureate of substance abuse, and these hepatic rhapsodies contain some of his most inventive writing' The Times
Will Self is the author of nine novels including Cock and Bull; My Idea of Fun; Great Apes; How the Dead Live; Dorian, an Imitation; The Book of Dave; The Butt; Walking to Hollywood and Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He has written five collections of shorter fiction and three novellas: The Quantity Theory of Insanity; Grey Area; License to Hug; The Sweet Smell of Psychosis; Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo; Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys; Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe and Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes. Self has also compiled a number of nonfiction works, including The Undivided Self: Selected Stories; Junk Mail; Perfidious Man; Sore Sites; Feeding Frenzy; Psychogeography; Psycho Too and The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The reliably diabolical Self delivers four longish stories about decay, debauchery and deliverance, each at least tangentially related to London's Plantation Club. In "Foie Humain," the Plantation Club is revealed to be a Soho drunkard's institution forever "lost in the foggy forties" and frequented by a crew of brash boozehounds. Among them, Isobel, the daughter of the protagonist of "Leberkn del," Joyce Beddoes, who, stricken with "nausea, sickly-sour and putrid; a painfully swollen belly and a hot wire in her urethra," ventures with Isobel to Zurich for an assisted suicide. Self's wry humor takes Joyce on an unexpected adventure as her cancer-ridden liver leads her from Birmingham to Switzerland and into a mess of religious intrigue. The same wit, and a mess of the Plantation's peripheral characters, continues through two more tales, "Prometheus," about a London advertising executive whose liver is nibbled upon daily by a vulture in exchange for "bigger pitches with bigger spends," and "Birdy Num Num," the least exciting of the collection, which follows a gaggle of junkies. Despite the occasional hiccup, Self's parts function quite well together to produce a picture of putrid beauty.