Shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards 'New Writer of the Year' 2012.
One of our Great Reads You May Have Missed in 2012.
A first novel to really get excited about. Set in an unnamed Eastern European country, our narrator is minding his friend's immaculate flat while the said friend is in America divorcing his wife ... easy, until alcohol raises its ugly head and small disasters turn huge. The absent owner has left little notes all over the place, the discovery of which introduces us to the man, a complete contrast to his flat-sitting friend. Beautifully written, very clever and unusual, this is an absolute gem. Highly recommended.
A brilliantly dark literary debut of death, destruction and interior decoration."e;But for the floors, and the sofa, and the porn, and the dead and missing, the flat was restored to order."e;An old friend asks you to look after his two cats and his apartment. What could go wrong? Care of Wooden Floors is about how a tiny oversight can trip off a disastrous and farcical (fatal, even) chain of consequences. It's about a friendship between two men who don't know each other very well. It's about alienation and being alone in a foreign city. It's about the quest for perfection and the struggle against entropy. And it is, a little, about how to take care of wooden floors.Oskar is a Mittel-European minimalist composer best known for a piece called "e;Variations on Tram Timetables."e; He is married to a Californian art dealer named Laura and he lives with two cats, named after Russian composers, in an Eastern European city.But this book isn't really about Oskar. Oskar is in Los Angeles, having his marriage to Laura dismantled by lawyers. He has entrusted an old university friend with the task of looking after his cats, and taking care of his perfect, beautiful apartment. Despite the fact that Oskar has left dozens of surreally detailed notes covering every aspect of looking after the flat, things do not go well.Dark, funny and compelling, this novel takes your breath away with its extraordinarily distinctive writing. The voice is unexpected, constantly, but consistently conveys a universal human experience that pulls the reader right into the world of the narrator.From the Trade Paperback edition.
