LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016.
A rich oligarch's path crosses the path of a disillusioned bookseller through whose voice his story, and that of the beautiful woman married to another whom he loves, is told all the way to its bitter conclusion. If the plot sounds familiar, it is of course a new iteration of THE GREAT GATSBY set in a contemporary London where money is everything. Knowing that, the novel is still a delight, a tale of intrigue, rare books, skullduggery, ambition, and romantic to the core even when it deviates freely from the F. Scott Fitzgerald template. It is also a portrait of the new, glittering London that surrounds us and how it is being transformed by the influx of the foreign rich, a territory that few until now have tackled. An eternal, melancholy story which never fails to tug at the heartstrings. ~ Maxim Jakubowski
Maxim Jakubowski July 2015 Highly Recommended.
Maxim Jakubowski
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Gorsky Synopsis
Book at Bedtime on Radio 4. Written with such narrative elegance that you're led irresistibly on, as with some exquisite dish, from one perfect melting mouthful to the next. (Michael Frayn). London dances to the tune of Gorsky's billions. The most enigmatic of oligarchs, Gorsky has been led to the city by his love for Natalia, whom he first knew in Russia. That she is now married to an Englishman is an inconvenient detail. Gorsky desires and gets the best of everything. His mansion by the Thames is set to make Buckingham Palace look like an ungainly box by a roundabout. At its heart will be a grand library, denoting taste and breeding. Now he just needs the books. When Gorsky's armour-plated car halts in front of a down-at-heel bookshop, the startled young man behind the till receives the commission of a lifetime. The bookseller suddenly gains privileged access to the wealthy and the beautiful; a world filled with delectable books but fraught with danger...
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781784700706 |
| Publication date: |
3rd September 2015 |
| Author: |
Vesna Goldsworthy |
| Publisher: |
Vintage an imprint of Vintage Publishing |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
277 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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Press Reviews
Vesna Goldsworthy Press Reviews
'Clever... entertaining... elegant' -- Rose Wild The Times
'It's surprising there haven't been more novels drawing on London's fascination with Russian oligarchs. But how to write about them without it all seeming a bit Jackie Collins? Vesna Goldsworthy has hit on the perfect solution with her witty novel Gorsky' -- Viv Groskop Spectator
'Entertaining and poignant, ironic and serious, Gorsky is both a literary homage and the work of a highly original imagination. Goldsworthy is brilliant on money, clothes. romantic love and decadent sex -- and on various kinds of immigrant species. A jeu d'esprit with a heart and mind.' Eva Hoffman
'Evocative, captivating and acutely observed' -- Patricia Nicol Sunday Times
'Here, at last, is the 'Gatsby for today's London - the holy city of the Russian super-rich. In a marvellously written, wickedly imagined novel, sometimes hauntingly sad and sometimes very funny, Vesna Goldsworthy evokes the loneliness which goes with sudden and gigantic wealth, as it falls upon men and women with no previous background of privilege. 'Gorsky' provides a crowded satire on the mob of hangers -on who follow the billionaires, and a clear-eyed panorama of Kensington and Chelsea as new money floods over old dignity.' Neal Ascherson
Author
About Vesna Goldsworthy
Vesna Goldsworthy was born in Belgrade in 1961 and has lived in London since 1986. She writes in English, her third language. She has authored three widely translated books: a memoir, Chernobyl Strawberries; Inventing Ruritania, on the shaping of cultural perceptions of the Balkans; and the Crashaw Prize-winning poetry collection, The Angel of Salonika. Gorsky is her first novel.
Author photo © Martin Figura
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