- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd; 1st Edition edition (6 Jan 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0436220822
- ISBN-13: 978-0436220821
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.6 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,955,825 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
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
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't thrust his cleverness down your throat,
By
This review is from: Don't Read This Book If You're Stupid: Stories (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.
3.0 out of 5 stars
I'm stupid too,
By
This review is from: Don't Read This Book If You're Stupid (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.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but no Under the Frog,
By
This review is from: Don't Read This Book If You're Stupid (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.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
