- Paperback: 261 pages
- Publisher: Picador USA; Reprint edition (Nov 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0312278527
- ISBN-13: 978-0312278526
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 14.1 x 1.9 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,737,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
If there is one thing Tibor Fischer can do like no one else, it's to pen snappy, devastating titles. Once you've got past the provocative posturing of this collection's title page, then you are faced with seven brilliantly dubbed pieces--try "We Ate The Chef", "Portrait of the Artist as a Foaming Deathmonger" and "I Like Being Killed" for size.
As all that might suggest, Fischer--known for his Booker-shortlisted Under The Frog and more recently The Thought Gangand The Collector Collector--is a clever writer, a wordsmith of tremendous dexterity, whose fluent prose surges forward with an irrepressible energy, usually pushing him to the furthest edges of a very dark humour and occasionally to a jarring callousness.
The opening novella "We Ate The Chef", for example, starts innocuously enough in Cambridge Circus, but somehow spirals into a Côte d'Azur thriller, climaxing in a particularly ungracious (but utterly appropriate) orgasm. In "Then They Say You're Drunk", Fischer, an adopted South Londoner, explores the quite plausible proposition that Brixton "must have more headcases per square inch than any other place in the world". His trademark stream-of-self-consciousness shares much with the rhythms of stand-up, so it comes as no surprise to find the closing "I Like Being Killed" delving into London's comedy circuit.
But there's a hint of seriousness among the casual cruelty. In the short "Ice Tonight in the Hearts of Young Visitors", Fischer stands on the Hungarian border and concludes bitterly: "I assure you if there is a hell, it will be the most solitary of confinements and cold". --Alan Stewart --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Amazon.co.uk Review
If there's one thing Tibor Fischer can do like no-one else, it's to pen snappy, devastating titles. Once you've got past the provocative posturing of this collection's title page, then you're faced with seven brilliantly dubbed pieces--try "We Ate The Chef", "Portrait of the Artist as a Foaming Deathmonger" and "I Like Being Killed" for size.
As all that might suggest, Fischer--known for his Booker-shortlisted Under The Frog and more recently The Thought Gang and The Collector Collector--is a clever writer, a wordsmith of tremendous dexterity, whose fluent prose surges forward with an irrepressible energy, usually pushing him to the furthest edges of a very dark humour and occasionally to a jarring callousness.
The opening novella "We Ate The Chef", for example, starts innocuously enough in Cambridge Circus, but somehow spirals into a Côte d'Azur thriller, climaxing in a particularly ungracious (but utterly appropriate) orgasm. In "Then They Say You're Drunk", Fischer, an adopted South Londoner, explores the quite plausible proposition that Brixton "must have more headcases per square inch than any other place in the world." His trademark stream-of-self-consciousness shares much with the rhythms of stand-up, so it comes as no surprise to find the closing "I Like Being Killed" delving into London's comedy circuit.
But there's a hint of seriousness among the casual cruelty. In the short "Ice Tonight in the Hearts of Young Visitors", Fischer stands on the Hungarian border and concludes bitterly: "I assure you if there is a hell, it will be the most solitary of confinements and cold." --Alan Stewart --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent collection of seven short stories by a writer who knows exactly what he is doing and how to do it. Modern-life situations come in for a scabrously funny exposé.
We Ate The Chef describes a disastrous holiday undergone by Jim, a web-designer whose business is rapidly going arse-up in a disappearing market. Ending up in the hired villa in Nice of a despised acquaintance, with a rival web-designer, two Russian girls and a moneyed ruffian, Jim eventually gets the unattached girl, but goes through hell beforehand.
Even better is I Like Being Killed which describes a few months in the life of a witty and gorgeous female stand-up comedian. Fischer gets the voice, the manner, the thinking absolutely right. He does the broad brushstrokes with aplomb and the detail is spot-on. Language gets a going over but here there is no hint of a "higher mind" in on the act, just someone who is very clever, and is confident enough not to thrust his cleverness down your throat.
We Ate The Chef describes a disastrous holiday undergone by Jim, a web-designer whose business is rapidly going arse-up in a disappearing market. Ending up in the hired villa in Nice of a despised acquaintance, with a rival web-designer, two Russian girls and a moneyed ruffian, Jim eventually gets the unattached girl, but goes through hell beforehand.
Even better is I Like Being Killed which describes a few months in the life of a witty and gorgeous female stand-up comedian. Fischer gets the voice, the manner, the thinking absolutely right. He does the broad brushstrokes with aplomb and the detail is spot-on. Language gets a going over but here there is no hint of a "higher mind" in on the act, just someone who is very clever, and is confident enough not to thrust his cleverness down your throat.
Format:Paperback
Tibor Fischer has many times (well, at least twice) proved himself as a comic genius. It was with great expectations then that I sat down to read this - in fact I saved it for a holiday after having preserved it lovingly on my bookshelf for some months.
However, the title should have rung alarm bells. Of Hungarian extract he may be, but Fischer suggests that it only takes one generation of inculcation by the English bourgeoisie to learn contempt for all things that aren't English and bourgeois (and a fine degree of self-hatred for things that are, too). It's a hard concept for the outsider to grasp, but the title's implication - that only non-stupid people could understand and appreciate the full horror of being an educated member of an industrially developed prosperous nation - encapsulates it nicely.
There are no diatribes here about the real follies and hypocrisies of modern life; rather one is left with a sense that Fischer is simply disgusted with all that he sees around him. (That includes you and me). That would be more than adequate were it done with a cogency and wit that you might expect from the author of 'Under the Frog' and 'The Thought Gang'; as it lacks this for the most part, it just comes over as misplaced snobbery.
A friend I lent this too described it as Martin Amis lite. And there's the rub - this book occasionally shines, but just isn't as good as it thinks it is. Read it if you want too, just don't take Fischer's view of your intelligence at face value.
Format:Paperback
A rather muted condemnation of Londoners for a failure to aspire to civilised values.
Under the Frog rendered a brilliant absurdist picture of life in communist Hungary. DRTBS fails to pull this off in a more familiar setting.
The apologists of Soviet communism still amongst us have turned amnesiac, it's an easier target for satire. Modern British sensitivities are more alert to unflattering portrayals of the willingly uncivilised. I've lived in Brixton, it is, as TF explains, a human landfill site. His account seems underplayed, literally true not a comic caricature.
UtF depicted the brutally stupid consequences of political values preceding personal ethics. DRTBS again asserts the primacy of personal ethics but it does not risk a head-on conflict with the contemporary fashion for censoring depictions that are not seen as socially progressive.
Occasionally brilliant, ultimately inconclusive, should have been bolder.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
If You Read This Book You're Stupid
First of all, I'm not stupid. I have a First Class Honours degree, an IQ of 157, play the piano to Grade 8 standard, yada yada yada. Read more
Published on 13 Aug 2007 by E. W. Collier
Not bad, but not great
The first story in this collection is the worst, but don't let it put you off. "Then They Say You're Drunk" and "I Like Being Killed" are probably the funniest, in a very dark... Read more
Published on 25 Mar 2004 by Julia
Maybe I'm over sensitive, but...
It's been said here before, but Tibor Fischer is a writer of some talent whose previous work ( especially Under the Frog ) deserves to be read by anyone who appreciates deep,... Read more
Published on 4 Oct 2003
Ignore the moaners.
Tibor Fischer is at heart, I think, a short story writer. I have heard him quoted as saying that the only reason he writes novels at all is that its the only way to get noticed and... Read more
Published on 21 Jan 2003 by doublegone
Other reviewers are being harsh
I consider the other reviewrs treatment of this book to be quite harsh. I bought and read first the "Thought Gang" and recently "Under the Frog" on the strength of this book. Read more
Published on 14 Jan 2003 by Robert Sharp
High expectations, low actuations
First of all: The Thought Gang is an excellent book. It's a really good read - witty, well-written, often ludicrously surreal. I read it a few years back and loved it. Read more
Published on 20 Dec 2001 by mjc@howlingmonkey.co.uk
Should've heeded the warning in the title.
I guess I must be stupid because this book seemed to me to be a tedious collection of pretentious stories that just meandered along without any kind of point. Read more
Published on 5 Mar 2001
Promising title, but not much to it
This is a collection of - admittedly - intelligent short stories, in places witty and full of biting sarcasm. Read more
Published on 26 Feb 2001
Fisching For Compliments (but I can't think of any)
Perhaps two stars is a bit low for this book. It's not that bad. But it reflects the level of disappointment felt by this reader. Read more
Published on 24 Feb 2001
Excellent Read
I do not usually like short stories but this book is very good. The characters are real and entertaining. Some of the quotes and concepts are very funny and thought provoking. Read more
Published on 26 Jan 2001 by A. Cumming
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