Too Beautiful for You: A Novel - Softcover

Liddle, Rod

Softcover

ISBN 10: 140007813X ISBN 13: 9781400078134

Publisher: Vintage, 2006

Synopsis

Shameless, deviant, depraved, the characters in Rod Liddle's story collection are just like us--only much, much worse.

Dumped by his mistress, Dempsey weeps on his wife's shoulder, wondering how best to kill himself so that at least seven people will try to stop him. Eddie miserably sneaks off to sleep with his wife's mother--a rather unpleasant situation from which he can't seem to extricate himself. And Christian, despite a terrible train accident and medical disaster, must just make it to Uttoxeter before he is caught in a horrible lie. Disturbingly funny, psychologically astute, and sharp as a knife, this collection of stories reveals the dark heart of human compulsion.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

An ambitious fiction debut filled with lust, longing, and moral depravity.
The tales in "Too Beautiful for You, Rod Liddle's dazzling debut, sweep readers into the lives of characters whose sexual frustrations and deviant desires lead them to the very edge of acceptable behavior--and sometimes way beyond.
In a mischievous, macabre tale about a man who loses his arm in an accident on the way back from an assignation, Liddle shows just how far a husband will go to hide his infidelity from his wife. Another philandering husband, operating much closer to home, doesn't let fleeting pangs of guilt curtail his hunger for the sexual treats proffered by his mother-in-law. Bizarre happenings are not confined to the sexually adventuresome: one woman notices that her skin is hardening into a sort of insect carapace after she uses a depilatory gel; a suicide bomber is forced to acknowledge his abysmal failure as a terrorist when he tries to blow up a Jewish art gallery with a package of trout; and a man planning to jump out a window finds some of his colleagues all too ready to assist him.
Liddle presents his panoply of misfits and miscreants without passing judgment. The passions they harbor and the acts they commit may be shocking and scandalous, but Liddle shows that these hapless men and women are not so very different from the rest of us. Sharp-witted, sexy, and psychologically astute, "Too Beautiful for You breaks through literary and social taboos with style and humor, reminiscent of the early work of Martin Amis.

About the Author

Rod Liddle is a well-known media figure in Britain. He worked at BBC Radio’s Today program and resigned amid much publicity when his bosses objected to his outspoken column in The Guardian. He is now associate editor of The Spectator and lives in South London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 140007813X
• ISBN 13: 9781400078134
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240