This is the Life - Softcover

O'Neill, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000730921X ISBN 13: 9780007309214

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2009

Synopsis

The debut novel from Joseph O'Neill, author of the Man Booker Prize longlisted and Richard & Judy pick, ‘Netherland’.

James Jones is slipping steadily through life. He has a steady job as a junior partner at a solicitor's firm, a steady girlfriend and a steady mortgage. Nothing much is happening in Jones's life but he really doesn't mind – this is exactly the way he likes it.

Michael Donovan, meanwhile, is a star – a world-class international lawyer and advocate – he's everything Jones wanted to be and isn't. Jones was once Donovan's pupil and, for a while, it looked like he too would make his name – but he left that high-powered world behind a long time ago, or so he thought.

One day Jones reads in the paper that Donovan has collapsed in court – then, out of the blue, Donovan contacts him; he has a job he needs Jones to work on...

Joseph O'Neill's debut is wonderfully clever and comic novel – about ambitions and aspirations and the realities that they inevitably collide with.

About this title

About the Author:

Joseph O'Neill is an Irish barrister living in New York. He is the author of two other novels, 'Netherland', which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and 'The Breezes', and a memoir, 'Blood-Dark Track'.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A first novel from young Irish writer O'Neill, a barrister in London, whose hero is a sort of legal Lucky Jim at sea in the law. James Jones is one of those dreamy young men, secretly nurturing great ambitions but never quite able to pull them off, who lurks in every profession. An indifferent law student, Jones has been transformed by reading a book by famous international lawyer Michael Donovan. Thereafter, he reads everything Donovan writes and, after graduation, becomes Donovan's ``pupil'' at his chambers. For six months, Jones works closely with his idol, a man obsessed by law and oblivious to everything else--but to Jones's great disappointment, he is turned down by the chambers at the end of his pupilage and has to join a small and undistinguished law firm. While he does unglamorous, nitty-gritty legal work, he embarks on a tepid relationship with Susan, as plain and undistinguished as himself, and tries to forget about the stimulating work he did with Donovan. But to Jones's surprise, Donovan, rumored to have recently suffered a nervous breakdown, suddenly asks Jones to represent him in his divorce--a divorce Donovan does not want. Jones, who at last feels he's getting closer to Donovan and fame, finds the man as elusive and puzzling as before. And given his penchant for getting things wrong, Jones not only fails to understand what is really going on but is nearly fired. His own subsequent breakdown leads him to admit that he's been too much the dreamer: ``No one was going anywhere. No one, not even Donovan, had anywhere to go.'' Witty and perceptive--but too drawn out, too carefully crafted, and too repetitive to really stun. Promise, but without pizazz. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 000730921X
• ISBN 13: 9780007309214
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224