Who's Who in Hell
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“A funny and exceptionally well-wrought romance that starts in disaster, ends in tragedy, and never loses sight of the manic and surreal in life” (Kirkus Reviews).
Struggling writer Daniel Linnell is a charming, though hapless, young Londoner until he meets Laura, an unsettlingly feisty American who likes to go skydiving on weekends. In no time at all, Daniel finds himself falling for her. At the same time, he finds a new job as an obituarist, where his editor, Whittington, initiates him into the pecking order of journalists; the annual ritual of the drunken Obituaries Outing; and the secret cache of unexpurgated obits of the less-than-angelic, obits that will never see print—which Whittington keeps in a hollowed-out book in his office.
With his editor’s encouragement, Daniel begins to write a Who’s Who in Hell—a mammoth compendium of the evil and damned. Begun for his own amusement, the book takes on a momentum of its own and garners him a publisher’s advance. Meanwhile things with Laura are going so well that he’s accompanying her to Kansas to meet her parents. His life is going swimmingly . . . until it takes a dive.
“Thoroughly engaging, delightful and very funny . . . A coming-of-age story set in a post-Thatcherite world.” —The New York Times Book Review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chalmers's debut novel explores that territory to which Nick Hornby has so expertly laid claim: the feckless man who has reached the fateful dividing point between the slacker lifestyle of the 20s and the bourgeois comforts that beckon in the 30s. Londoner Daniel Linnell is on the verge of losing his job with Resolve, a counseling center where he mans the pay-per-minute therapy hot lines. Into his life comes Laura Jardine, an expatriate American who manages a hipster pub. Laura defines herself by her hobbies: taking pictures of dogs and parachuting, the latter a little too obviously portentous of disaster to come. After Daniel receives the boot from the institute, he eventually finds his true niche as an incredibly well-remunerated obituarist for a London paper (in a country where obituaries are a sort of literary extreme sport). Essentially, Daniel's job is to compose farewells that hint at the vices and inadequacies of the dearly departed. Inspired by his job, Daniel begins work on an obituary almanac of the more notorious inhabitants of hell. Meanwhile, he and Laura surmount, with some mutual angst, Laura's penchant for infidelity, visit Laura's boorish Kansas family and produce a child. Chalmers can be witty, but he lacks Hornby's light touch; there is too much exegesis per joke and scenes run on longer than they need to. Still, there are some inspired moments, and he tackles family tragedy with more assurance than he handles comedy the book's dark denouement offers a strong finish.
