Review
'One of the funniest and most straight-out brilliant novels of the last few years'
Guardian
'Funny, smart and mean'
David Nicholls, author of One Day (picked The Ask as one of his BOOKS OF THE YEAR in The Times)
'Hysterically funny . . . amazing . . . it affords breathtaking views of the social landscape of "late capitalism"'
Observer
'that rare thing . . . a proper comic novel'
The Times
'Incandescently written . . . you have to go back to Joseph Heller in his prime to find writing this energised'
Sunday Times
'Zinging . . . The Ask may not be the novel America wanted to get, but clearly it's the one it has been asking for . . . If this is reminiscent of anything it's Martin Amis at his 1980s apogee'
Guardian
'Made me snort out laughing on the Tube in a really embarrassing way . . . Milo is possibly the smartest satirical character you'll come across'
Literary Review
'Oh, how I laughed at this book'
David Sedaris
'No novel caught the zeitgeist better . . . It cuts to the sad heart of our age'
Evening Standard (picked as a BOOK OF THE YEAR)
'Read Lipsyte and rejoice'
New York Times
'One of the novelists whose voice will define the next decade'
Independent (where The Ask was picked as a BOOK OF THE YEAR)
'It's customary for radically sardonic, corrosively funny writers to put in time as mere cult icons, but enough already: everybody should read Sam Lipsyte'
Time Magazine
'A masterpiece . . . Everything about it is timely and penetrating and a crack-like buzz to read'
Dazed and Confused
'So funny you might lose an eye'
Vanity Fair
'Screamingly funny'
Geoff Dyer
'I laughed out loud -- and I never laugh out loud'
Chuck Palahniuk
'Lipsyte is a gifted stylist, precise, original, devious, and very funny'
Jeffrey Eugenides
'Scabrously, deliriously funny . . . Lipsyte's prose arrows fly with gloriously weird spin, tracing punch-drunk curlicues before hitting their marks or landing in some nearby alternate universe'
New York Review of Books --...
Guardian
'Funny, smart and mean'
David Nicholls, author of One Day (picked The Ask as one of his BOOKS OF THE YEAR in The Times)
'Hysterically funny . . . amazing . . . it affords breathtaking views of the social landscape of "late capitalism"'
Observer
'that rare thing . . . a proper comic novel'
The Times
'Incandescently written . . . you have to go back to Joseph Heller in his prime to find writing this energised'
Sunday Times
'Zinging . . . The Ask may not be the novel America wanted to get, but clearly it's the one it has been asking for . . . If this is reminiscent of anything it's Martin Amis at his 1980s apogee'
Guardian
'Made me snort out laughing on the Tube in a really embarrassing way . . . Milo is possibly the smartest satirical character you'll come across'
Literary Review
'Oh, how I laughed at this book'
David Sedaris
'No novel caught the zeitgeist better . . . It cuts to the sad heart of our age'
Evening Standard (picked as a BOOK OF THE YEAR)
'Read Lipsyte and rejoice'
New York Times
'One of the novelists whose voice will define the next decade'
Independent (where The Ask was picked as a BOOK OF THE YEAR)
'It's customary for radically sardonic, corrosively funny writers to put in time as mere cult icons, but enough already: everybody should read Sam Lipsyte'
Time Magazine
'A masterpiece . . . Everything about it is timely and penetrating and a crack-like buzz to read'
Dazed and Confused
'So funny you might lose an eye'
Vanity Fair
'Screamingly funny'
Geoff Dyer
'I laughed out loud -- and I never laugh out loud'
Chuck Palahniuk
'Lipsyte is a gifted stylist, precise, original, devious, and very funny'
Jeffrey Eugenides
'Scabrously, deliriously funny . . . Lipsyte's prose arrows fly with gloriously weird spin, tracing punch-drunk curlicues before hitting their marks or landing in some nearby alternate universe'
New York Review of Books --...
Product Description
Milo Burke -- husband to a 'touched-out' wife, father to a three-year-old son, fund-raising officer at a third-tier university -- has just joined the swelling ranks of the unemployed. As he grasps after odd jobs to support his wife and child, Milo is contacted by Purdy Stuart, a wealthy, one-time university friend with a sinister agenda. It is the start of a hilarious and harrowing odyssey through several degrees of peculiarly 21st-century hell -- a journey recorded by Milo with the caustic eloquence that is his only means of defence. The Ask is the best book yet from one of America's finest comic writers, an author who can prompt Chuck Palahniuk to write: 'I laughed out loud -- and I never laugh out loud'. A critical sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, this is a ridiculously accomplished, ridiculously entertaining novel that sympathises even as it skewers.
