Zoo Time
1st Edition
Published on 30. August 2012
384 pages
978-1-4088-2914-1 (ISBN)
Description
_______________
'Comedy is never as clever as when Howard Jacobson is on a roll and this book finds him barrelling' - Independent on Sunday
'Brilliantly composed ... crackling with Jacobson's wit, superb wordplay and boundless exuberance' - Times Literary Supplement
'Seriously funny' - Alexei Sayle, Daily Telegraph
_______________
A sharp, witty novel from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question
Novelist Guy Ableman is in thrall to his vivacious wife Vanessa, a strikingly beautiful red-head, contrary, highly strung and blazingly angry. The trouble is, he is no less in thrall to her alluring mother, Poppy. More like sisters than mother and daughter, they come as a pair, a blistering presence that destroys Guy's peace of mind, suggesting the wildest stories but making it impossible for him to concentrate long enough to write any of them.
Not that anyone reads Guy, anyway. Not that anyone is reading anything. Reading, Guy fears, is finished. His publisher, fearing the same, has committed suicide. His agent, like all agents, is in hiding. Vanessa, in the meantime, is writing a novel of her own. Guy doesn't expect her to finish it, or even start it, but he dreads the consequences if she does.
In flight from personal disappointment and universal despair, Guy wonders if it's time to take his love for Poppy to another level. Fiction might be dead, but desire isn't. And out of that desire he imagines squeezing one more great book.
By turns angry, elegiac and rude, Zoo Time is a novel about love - love of women, love of literature, love of laughter. It shows our funniest writer at his brilliant best.
_______________
'All the trademark Jacobson qualities - waspish comedy, transgressive sex, wry riffs on Jewishness, prose so scintillating you might miss its underlying artistry - are here in spades *****' - The Mail on Sunday
'Once again, Jacobson shows that the true humorist is among the best kinds of novelist. His humour is neither cheap nor chirpy but addresses fundamental mysteries' - Sunday Telegraph
'Comedy is never as clever as when Howard Jacobson is on a roll and this book finds him barrelling' - Independent on Sunday
'Brilliantly composed ... crackling with Jacobson's wit, superb wordplay and boundless exuberance' - Times Literary Supplement
'Seriously funny' - Alexei Sayle, Daily Telegraph
_______________
A sharp, witty novel from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question
Novelist Guy Ableman is in thrall to his vivacious wife Vanessa, a strikingly beautiful red-head, contrary, highly strung and blazingly angry. The trouble is, he is no less in thrall to her alluring mother, Poppy. More like sisters than mother and daughter, they come as a pair, a blistering presence that destroys Guy's peace of mind, suggesting the wildest stories but making it impossible for him to concentrate long enough to write any of them.
Not that anyone reads Guy, anyway. Not that anyone is reading anything. Reading, Guy fears, is finished. His publisher, fearing the same, has committed suicide. His agent, like all agents, is in hiding. Vanessa, in the meantime, is writing a novel of her own. Guy doesn't expect her to finish it, or even start it, but he dreads the consequences if she does.
In flight from personal disappointment and universal despair, Guy wonders if it's time to take his love for Poppy to another level. Fiction might be dead, but desire isn't. And out of that desire he imagines squeezing one more great book.
By turns angry, elegiac and rude, Zoo Time is a novel about love - love of women, love of literature, love of laughter. It shows our funniest writer at his brilliant best.
_______________
'All the trademark Jacobson qualities - waspish comedy, transgressive sex, wry riffs on Jewishness, prose so scintillating you might miss its underlying artistry - are here in spades *****' - The Mail on Sunday
'Once again, Jacobson shows that the true humorist is among the best kinds of novelist. His humour is neither cheap nor chirpy but addresses fundamental mysteries' - Sunday Telegraph
More details
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
ISBN-13
978-1-4088-2914-1 (9781408829141)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Person
An award-winning writer and broadcaster, Howard Jacobson was born in Manchester, brought up in Prestwich and was educated at Stand Grammar School in Whitefield, and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied under F. R. Leavis. He lectured for three years at the University of Sydney before returning to teach at Selwyn College, Cambridge. His novels include The Mighty Walzer (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Kalooki Nights (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize), the highly acclaimed The Act of Love and, most recently, the Man Booker Prize-winning, The Finkler Question. Howard Jacobson lives in Soho, London.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- One Monkey
- 1 He Stroke She
- 2 V&P
- 3 Me Beagle
- 4 Death of a Publisher
- 5 Me, Me, Me
- 6 Party's Over
- 7 Room at the Bottom
- 8 So What Are We Going To Do With You?
- 9 Same Old Same Old
- 10 Are There Monkeys in Monkey Mia?
- 11 Comedian
- 12 Little Gidding
- 13 Viscera
- 14 OCD
- 15 I Am a Cello
- 16 All the World Loves a Wedding
- 17 Old Times
- 18 Going Cuckoo
- 19 The Baton of Literature
- 20 Big in Canada
- 21 My Hero
- Two The Mother-in-Law Joke
- 22 Blocked
- 23 Less is Less
- 24 The Bosom of the Family
- 25 Terminus
- 26 Fat Checker
- 27 Wildebeest
- 28 How Much Did Your Last Book Make?
- 29 Dying from the Brain Out
- 30 Murdering Time
- 31 Every Living Writer is Shit
- 32 Fetch, Fetch
- 33 Read Me, Read Me, Fuck Me, Fuck Me
- 34 Life's a Beach
- 35 Too Late for the Apocalypse
- Three Famous Last Words
- 36 A Fuckload of Good Luck
- 37 The Good Husband
- 38 Whore
- 39 Wild One
- 40 Whoremaster
- 41 Tell Me About It
- 42 Luss
- 43 Apeshit
- 44 Spelt From Sibyl's Leaves
- A Note on the Author
- By the Same Author
- Also available by Howard Jacobson
- Copyright Page
