Life-Like
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£19.50
Emotionally compelling and formally innovative, Life-Like is Toby Litt’s most ambitious collection of short stories to date, bringing to fruition themes first aired in his previous books, Adventures in Capitalism, Exhibitionism, and I Play the Drums in a Band Called Okay. Life-Like is a book about our globalizing and atomizing world—with stories set in India, Sweden, Australia, and Iran—that also looks at how we meet and fail to meet and what connects us to one another, as well as waste and communication, and, in turn, communication through waste.
The twenty-six stories begin with Paddy and Agatha, an English couple last seen in Litt’s Ghost Story. Following the stillbirth of their second child, their marriage has gently begun to collapse. Paddy and Agatha both meet someone else. First, Paddy meets Kavita, and Agatha meets John. Then each of these four engages with a different new person—and so on, through a doubling and redoubling of intimately interconnected stories. The remaining short stories exemplify Litt’s impressive, unflinching prose.
The twenty-six stories begin with Paddy and Agatha, an English couple last seen in Litt’s Ghost Story. Following the stillbirth of their second child, their marriage has gently begun to collapse. Paddy and Agatha both meet someone else. First, Paddy meets Kavita, and Agatha meets John. Then each of these four engages with a different new person—and so on, through a doubling and redoubling of intimately interconnected stories. The remaining short stories exemplify Litt’s impressive, unflinching prose.
“Litt has a streak of playfulness in him. . . . His narratives freely venture into unexpected forms, from cartoons to a screenplay to a Twitter feed. But the subject is the age-old one of connection.” —Wall Street Journal
“Quite an important addition. . ” —The Guardian
“Litt’s writing is comic with a deadpan delivery, and sometimes shockingly observant. . . . Enormously clever.” —Times
“An essential purchase for short story fans but an equally essential purchase for anyone who likes great fiction. Litt is on top form.” —Bookmunch
“The book reads like primitive magic. . . . Litt’s is the exquisite imagination that is first about the infamy of forgetting and then its corroding detachment.” —3:AM Magazine
ISBN:
9780857422071
Pages:
274 , 10 line drawings
Rights:
UCP
Publication Year:
November, 2014
Format:
Hardback
Size:
6" x 9"
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