Whatever Love Means - Brossura

Baddiel, David

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0349113254 ISBN 13: 9780349113258

Casa editrice: Abacus, 2000

Riassunto

Like most people, Vic Mullan - once described by his best friend Joe as 'a man whose sense of social responsibility is exhausted by pulling over to let an ambulance by' - can remember where he was and what he was doing on the day of Princess Diana's death. Yes, he can remember it particularly well: he was at home, beginning an affair with Emma, Joe's wife.
The opening sections of David Baddiel's second novel chart the history of an intense and passionately sexual liaison set against the background of the most hysterical time in recent memory. But as the months wear on, and life and love return to normal, so things become more complex between Vic and Emma. And then, tragedy - a real, local, small-scale tragedy, as opposed to a national, iconic, mythological one - intervenes.
Part-satire, part-love story, part-whodunnit, and part-meditation on the nature of sex and death, WHATEVER LOVE MEANS confirms Nick Hornby's assertion that David Baddiel has 'gone straight into the First Eleven of young contemporary British novelists'.

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Recensione:

Vic is a nearly-famous rock guitarist thinking about shacking up in south London with his foul-mouthed thirty-something girlfriend Tess; Vic's best friend Joe is a geeky, AIDS-researching biochemist who shares a son and a flash yuppie pad with the beautiful and slightly Irish Emma. On the day of Princess Diana's death Vic falls into bed with Em; a few months later Joe sort of does the same with Tess. If that were all there was to this book, it would hardly be worth bothering with: just another Hampstead (or rather, Herne Hill) adultery novel. What raises it up a considerable notch, quite apart from Baddiel's obvious gift for very good jokes, is his less expected gift for deadpan but dryly insightful prose, and his even more unexpected talent for fleshing out character. Every player in this touching, tragic tale: female as well as male, minor as much as major, villainous alongside virtuous, is eminently believable, and harrowingly feasible. Not quite so convincing is the Princess-Diana-death subplot that forms a background to the early chapters. Like the hysteria over the Queen of Hearts itself, the whole thing rather peters out, and provides little more than an excuse for the book's well-chosen title (it's a famous Prince Chuck quote apropos his then fiancée Diana). Taken as a whole, small misgivings aside, this is a fine and impressive novel: funny, sad, warm, dark, tender, wise, and bleakly memorable. (Sean Thomas, AMAZON.CO.UK)

I read it in one sitting with awe... a thriller and a love story constructed with a sinister symmetry where everything comic is shadowed by something dark (Chrissie Iley, SUNDAY TIMES)

Touching and strange and funny (Sam Mendes, Director of AMERICAN BEAUTY)

A black, sometimes tender read ...An impressive and intelligent book from a novelist who deserves to be taken seriously (THE TIMES)

Descrizione del libro:

* Second novel from TV writer/comedian and novelist - and again, a bitter-sweet romantic tragicomedy.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Abacus
• Data di pubblicazione: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0349113254
• ISBN 13: 9780349113258
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 416