Caroline's Bikini: A Novel - Hardcover

Gunn, Kirsty

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571339328 ISBN 13: 9780571339327

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2019

Synopsis

A gin-fueled love story with one part One Day mixed with one part Zadie Smith and a splash of Ali Smith.

Included in the Guardian's "Top Ten books about unrequited love"

"Alright" I said, "I’ll try..." This is how Emily Stuart opens her intricate tale of a classic love affair that becomes Caroline’s Bikini: a swirling cocktail of infatuation, obsession, and imagination. The moment that Emily’s friend Evan Gordonstone - a successful middle-aged financier - meets Caroline Beresford – a glamorous former horsewoman, and now housewife, hostess, and landlady - there is a "PING!" At least, that's how Evan describes it to Emily when he persuades her to record his story: the story of falling into unrequited love, which is as old as Western literature itself. Thus begins a hypnotic series of conversations set against the beguiling backdrop of West London’s bars, fueled in intensity by endless gin and tonics and Q&As. From the depths of mid-winter to July’s hot swelter, Emily's narration of Evan’s passion for Caroline will take him to the brink of his own destruction.

Written in a voice so playful, so charismatic, and so thoughtfully aware of the responsibilities of fiction it can only be by Kirsty Gunn, Caroline’s Bikini is a swooning portrait of courtly love - in a modern world not celebrated for its restraint and abstraction. Ready. Steady. Go!

About this title

About the Author

Kirsty Gunn is an internationally awarded writer who published her first novel with Faber in 1994 and since then eight works of fiction, including short stories, as well as a collection of fragments and meditations, and essays. She is Professor of Writing Practice and Study at the University of Dundee and lives in London and Scotland with her husband and two daughters.

Review

"A restless innovator ... Trumps even her own past work in its audacity ... Guts and cheek to spare ... Reminded me of James’s serpentine late style as much as it did the prose of Virginia Woolf or Gunn’s compatriot, Katherine Mansfield ... Caroline’s Bikini nods to its Modernist ancestors but never grovels to them ... Gunn’s serious playfulness will make you think again about every convention of fiction we lazily take for granted ... Nothing much may happen. But the feeling ― and the writing ― overflows."―Boyd Tonkin, Financial Times

"Gunn’s playful and endearing voice makes it a joy to read. Who knew postmodernism could be this fun?"―Tatler

"A really superb, very readable novel."―Guardian

"Remarkable ... demands that readers put themselves into the same headspace as they would before embarking on a novel by, say, William Faulkner, James Joyce or Woolf."―Financial Times

Gunn has written a blissfully anarchic and inspiring novel about the futility of writing; a delightful paradox in itself."―Literary Review

"‘[a] bold and brainy enterprise.’"―Observer

"...when restless innovators such as Ali Smith, Nicola Barker, Sarah Hall, Will Self, Jon McGregor, Deborah Levy, Gwendoline Riley and Eimear McBride set much of the agenda for fiction...Kirsty Gunn belongs in this exemplary few..."―Financial Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0571339328
• ISBN 13: 9780571339327
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352