The Independent
"This first novel by a young Welsh poet is the sharpest, funniest, rudest account of a periodically troubled teenager's coming-of-age since The Catcher in the Rye... This brilliant novel is laugh-out-loud enjoyable"
The Guardian
"Joe Dunthorne's cheerfully peculiar 15-year old narrator is a worthy successor to Adrian Mole...Funny, in a deadpan way. This feels like an authentic portrait of someone floundering around in an attempt to discover his own identity as he grows up"
Time Out
"[Submarine] has a poignant undertow, along with [a] wealth of excruciatingly funny incidents and cracking gags...a richly amusing tale of mock GCSEs, sex, death and challenging vocabulary"
Financial Times
"Oliver's anxieties are so well observed as to make you wince...Dunthorne commands wordplay like a mature poet and imagines foreplay like a teenage boy"
The Times
"This is a brilliant first novel, by a young man of ferocious comic talent -- Oliver is the finest teenage narrator since Adrian Mole"
Product Description
Hello. I'm Oliver Tate, the protagonist. I am likely to use words like protagonist and, moments later, words like twonk. My ambitions are as follows: 1) To find out why my father sometimes stays in bed for days at a time 2) To find out why my mother's getting surfing lessons – and probably more – from a hippy-looking twonk 3) To lose my virginity before it becomes legal – in just over a year I am monitoring my parent's intimacy via the dimmer switch in their bedroom. My parents have not had sex in two months which, my research suggests, points toward impending marital breakdown. There are other, lesser characters in the book: Jordana, who is my love interest, despite her eczema. Zoe, whose only real schoolfriend is a dinner lady. I feel sorry for Zoe which, in turn, makes me feel better about my own life. Then there's my friend Chips, an outstanding bully. He made our Religious Education teacher cry. This book might not change my life. But there is no telling how you will react.
About the Author
Joe Dunthorne was born and brought up in Swansea. His poetry has been featured on Channel 4 and Radio 3 and he has performed at festivals including Hay-on-Wye and Latitude. Now twenty-five, Joe lives in London. Submarine is his first novel.
