LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Really twisted, fragmented short stories which (except for two) interlink through the characters and their unusual lives. It’s an extreme view on society, quite shocking, at times surreal, beautifully written and horribly haunting. One of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever read.
Sarah Broadhurst
Find This Book In
About
Too Beautiful For You Synopsis
Rod Liddle' s hilarious, outrageous column in the Guardian says things about public life many may think but few dare say in public. In TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR YOU he applies the same principle to the emotional life - and particularly sexual feelings. The interweaving lives of a group of people living in a small area of South London sometimes become surreal, but are always charged with emotion, and Liddle describes them in a way that, however bizarre the turn of events, emotional reality burns off the page. A young woman gets very drunk and sleeps with a Romanian tramp. She hopes her friend won't tell anyone, if no other reason than that she knows this friend wants to keep secret that she once slept with a dwarf. Meanwhile her friend is turning into a member of the insect kingdom through over- use of depilatory gel. A headmaster considers means of chastising a troublesome pupil who has raped and murdered a member of staff and mounted her head on a pole in the playground, and a man considers whether or not to embark on an illicit affair, remembering that the last time he did so, he was watched by the entire British establishment through a first floor window. And meanwhile an addled journalist seeks comfort from his wife on account of the fact that he has lost his girlfriend, who really was too beautiful for him.
About This Edition
Press Reviews
Rod Liddle Press Reviews
‘As news of a terrible plane crash echoes through his office, adulterer Martin Dempsey thinks only of defenestrating himself now his "too beautiful" colleague Lucy has humiliatingly dumped him. Several postcodes away, taxi driver Eddie gropes his mother-in-law in her lounge while his unwitting wife is locked in the loo. In a nearby wine bar Emily gets, you know, drunk out of her mind. Later she sleeps with a down-and-out, and, as worse leads to worst, is reacquainted with the fact that she still has an eight-year-old son somewhere whom she "forgot" to abort. This worthless bunch of characters join others in a series of loosely linked stories of modern life that sometimes meander tantalisingly into the surreal, while never coalescing into something that could be called a novel. Rod Liddle, indubitably possessed of powerful writing skills, might be trying to show us how morally degraded our society has become. If so, he certainly succeeds.
Guardian Review
Author
About Rod Liddle
Rod Liddle resigned as editor of BBC Radio 4's flagship Today program last September after a row over impartiality in his regular column in the Guardian. Told by his bosses he must make a choice, Liddle opted to quit the program and keep his newspaper column. Liddle is now associate editor of The Spectator. He recently presented Seven Ways to Topple Saddam on BBC2 and programs follow for Channel 4 on the Church of England and pornography, along with a BBC politics show.
More About Rod Liddle
