The Gift - Hardcover

David L. Flusfeder

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007140800 ISBN 13: 9780007140800

Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd, 2003

Synopsis

Problem: Best friends keep giving extremely generous giftsSolution: Give better ones in returnPhilip has a lot on his mind. At home, in his unnecessarily large, excessively expensive house in south London, he is attempting to become a Taoist master of love with his wife Alice, but his quest is forever being interrupted by the requests of his twin daughters: Can we have a pony - please? I want to go to boarding school - please? At work, in his shed/office at the bottom of the garden, between countless games of Minesweep and FreeCell, Philip is trying to pay the mortgage by writing instruction manuals for Korean bread-making machines. And, at parties where he is concerned that he is not taken seriously (he has been variously mistaken as a doctor/waiter and sinologist) Philip tells the world he is a scriptwriter, even though all he has managed to pen is a story he calls Wang the Unlucky Scholar.But, above all, Philip is worrying about his best friends Sean and Barry. The problem is simple: they give great presents. Their gifts are exquisite: a full set of Italian crockery, a handmade corkscrew from Venice. They give them indiscriminately: on birthdays, at parties and quite often for no reason whatsoever. And, most distressingly, these presents break all bounds of generosity: two FA Cup Final tickets beside the royal box, a skiing holiday for Philip's entire family. These are gifts that hurt a man's pride, these are gifts that can never be matched.

About this title

About the Author:

David Flusfeder is the author of three novels, Man Kills Woman (1993), Like Plastic (1996), which won the Encore Award, and Morocco (2001).

From Publishers Weekly:

Black comedy meets social satire meets British farce in this winning novel by the author of Man Kills Woman, which shows how one man's generosity can become the source of another man's insanity. Phillip, an ex-football (as in soccer) star and a vaguely hapless instruction manual writer, is best friends with couple Barry and Sean, who are so rich and nice that they shower Phillip and his family with lavish gifts-skiing vacations, rare Chinese carvings and priceless Venetian corkscrews. With each new present he receives, Phillip becomes more obsessed with finding the perfect return gift. Repeated failures leave him so overwhelmed by gift inadequacy ("I had lost. I had been defeated utterly... I was the inferior man") that his attempts at reciprocation begin to look more like revenge. A sketchy fellow named Carlo-whom Phillip meets in jail after a dinner party gone awry-feeds Phillip's anxieties, and soon Phillip is sneaking into Barry and Sean's home in the middle of the night to perform a "creepy-crawly": shifting around their personal possessions and inadvertently killing one of the chinchilla rabbits he'd given them as a gift. Flusfeder's delightfully spare prose makes room, too, for the search for cult hero and erstwhile Pink Floyd guitarist Syd Barrett, with whom Barry is obsessed; movie world excesses, displayed by Barry and Sean's fancy friends; parenting anxiety; and lots of Taoist sex-though why Phillip's wife, Alice, remains eternally willing despite his near-psychosis is a bit of a mystery. This is a witty, razor-sharp novel, with just the right amount of tenderness.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0007140800
• ISBN 13: 9780007140800
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320