Synopsis
Literary ombudsman John Crace never met an important book he didn't like to deconstruct.From Salman Rushdie to John Grisham, Crace retells the big books in just 500 bitingly satirical words, pointing his pen at the clunky plots, stylistic tics and pretensions to Big Ideas, as he turns publishers' golden dream books into dross. In the grand tradition of Tom Lehrer and Stan Freberg, Crace takes the books that produce the most media hype and retells each story in its author's inimitable style. Philip Roth, Don Delillo, Margaret Drabble, Paul Auster, Alice Sebold, John Updike, Tom Wolfe, Ruth Rendell, A.S. Byatt, John LeCarre, Michael Crichton and Ian McEwan all emerge delightfully scathed in this book that makes it easy to talk knowingly about books you've never bothered to read or, for that matter, should have.
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About the Author
Literary ombudsman John Crace never met an important book he didn't like to deconstruct.From Salman Rushdie to John Grisham, Crace retells the big books in just 500 bitingly satirical words, pointing his pen at the clunky plots, stylistic tics and pretensions to Big Ideas, as he turns publishers' golden dream books into dross. In the grand tradition of Tom Lehrer and Stan Freberg, Crace takes the books that produce the most media hype and retells each story in its author's inimitable style. Philip Roth, Don Delillo, Margaret Drabble, Paul Auster, Alice Sebold, John Updike, Tom Wolfe, Ruth Rendell, A.S. Byatt, John LeCarre, Michael Crichton and Ian McEwan all emerge delightfully scathed in this book that makes it easy to talk knowingly about books you've never bothered to read or, for that matter, should have.
From the Back Cover
"The best book-related feature in any of this planet s English-language newspapers."
The New York Times
Reviews
In this funny, vicious lit-crit roundup, columnist and reporter Crace collects more than 100 weekly pieces from The Guardian, in which he cleverly "digests" modern books, turning in funny, highly opinionated synopses that never top 500 words. He leaves no genre unturned, cutting short everything from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to Shopaholic & Sister to The Universe in a Nutshell to What Not to Wear. Along with satirical tidbits, ultra-compressed dialogue and razor-sharp critique, Crace includes all the important details, though often buried under brutal sarcasm. Crace further digests each work with "the digested read...digested," summarizing his own summary into one often caustic sentence: thus, Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons is ultimately reduced to "I'm not as good as I used to be"; for The Da Vinci Code, Crace concludes blithely, "Several million readers can all be wrong." Crace also includes "bonus features," where he digests iconic authors such as Truman Capote and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Though Crace admits that "occasionally I can do nice," this is a wicked cultural survey perfect for the bitter and well-read.
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