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Corpsing (Paperback)

by Toby Litt (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd (3 Feb 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0241140692
  • ISBN-13: 978-0241140697
  • Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.5 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 527,543 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #14 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > L > Litt, Toby

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Toby Litt's third book is all bullet entry wounds, violent emotion and forensic detail. Corpsing works as a deconstructed literary thriller, a very knowing examination of the pathology of the genre. It starts off in the traditional way, with a death. Jean Luc Godard said 'all you need for a good story is a girl and a gun.' In Corpsing the girl is Lily, a beautiful actress and the ex-girlfriend of Conrad, the narrator. The gun is in the hands of an assassin, dressed in bike courier clothing who looks like "a vision of the future--a future where everyone is concerned with keeping their bodies fit and dodging between fast new technologies of damage." He fires at Lily and Conrad as they eat dinner at fashionable Le Corbusier, a restaurant which resembles an autopsy room in the morgue: "the tables are a frosty-looking aluminium, the walls are half mirror, half stainless steel". Six bullets later and the damage is done, Lily is dead and Conrad is nearly so.

The dissection really begins when Conrad comes out of hospital and begins investigating Lily's murder, his own near miss. The plot unfolds in short, sharp chapters, keen as knives. Toby Litt uses Conrad to provide an extra twist to the usual serpentine story. He has a morbid interest in the clinical details of the results of his injuries. He, like Litt, is very aware of the etiquette of cool violence, a cultural culling that takes in J F K succumbing to the "magic bullet", Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, and, of course, Reservoir Dogs. Corpsing is an interesting critique of our fondness for violence and death as entertainment, while cunningly providing us with all the gory details, the damage done. Clever, but a little soulless. --Eithne Farry



Product Description

When Conrad is called up by his ex-girlfriend Lily, a model/actress, he jumps at the chance to have dinner with her. At the restaurant, a bicycle courier enters, pulls out a very large gun, shoots Lily dead and then fires three shots at Conrad, leaving him for dead too.
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Customer Reviews

26 Reviews
5 star:
 (6)
4 star:
 (6)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (7)
1 star:
 (5)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (26 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Copsing (nearly) corpses, 10 April 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Corpsing (Paperback)
This is a book of three thirds. The first third is well-written, leisurely in pace, attentive to detail and sustains the interest. The second third feels rushed, with little care given to fleshing out some secondary characters (Lawrence and criminal comedy-stylist Smart come to mind), leaving the reader with cliched caricatures and pedestrian narrative and dialogue that on occasion reminded me of a 15 year-old's self-indulgent attempt at "serious" writing ("He put on the album "In Utero" by the rock band Nirvana", grated particularly).
The final third goes a little way towards redemption, as the writing becomes tighter and Litt burrows deeper and deeper into Dead Lily's psyche, presenting us finally with the image of a totally inept human being.
And the ending? Faintly ludicrous but better than I'd anticipated.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars readable but runs of of ideas, and grinds to an ending, 21 May 2002
By simon gurney - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Corpsing (Paperback)
The first thrid of the book was excellent, some great devices, and ideas indeed shaping up nicely as a five star book. unfortunately this is where we stop, no new ideas seem to crop up in the second half and the book loses direction and momentum, although still readable, its a shame the pace lets up, and really everything is just padding until the unfortunately predictable and predicted end.
to spend the last chapter having another character try to limply explain away what the story hasnt adequately dealt with, badly. was a let down.
the need to name each street in London that the story crosses and various shops and bars seems a bit unneccessary.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars hmmmm, 30 Jul 2005
By M. Westlake "Limey" (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Corpsing (Paperback)
Others are correct in praising the book's first act; the writing is quick, with lots of short chapters, elegant and full of ideas. Plenty of action, very imaginative. From there it is largely downhill; aside from a few well targetted, stand-up-comic-style riffs on deserving topics such as the RSC and the dress sense of menopausal women, it largely fails to hold the attention so effectively grabbed at the beginning. Characters, aside from the central character, are largely two-dimensional stereotypes (the hood, the aging actress, the teenager) which, while effectively observed, are neither particularly credible or interesting. This would matter less if the plot worked. It doesn't. The attempts to drop red-herrings are fairly risible, and suddenly leave Litt with a huge amount of exposition to cram into the final five pages, by the end one senses that he is as tired of telling the story as I was reading it. A shame, because several of his other books (eg: deadkidsongs)are excellent, and had left me expecting more from from a genuinely gifted writer.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A stylish, modern thriller
Corpsing is essentially a thriller, opening with a restaurant shooting which injures the narrator, Conrad, and kills his ex-girlfriend, with whom he is dining. Read more
Published on 26 Jan 2004 by whateverthismeans

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a laugh out loud, but a good read
A slightly over-hyped book, but nonetheless an enjoyable read... Don't believe the comment on the cover about laughing out load within so many pages- I didn't. Read more
Published on 14 Feb 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars A genuinely good read!
Attracted by the stylish red cover.., I bought this book expecting it to be yet another standard thriller. I was wrong. Read more
Published on 7 Dec 2001

1.0 out of 5 stars A pointless exercise.
A thriller without thrills, awash with self-regard and taking you, the reader, nowhere. The linear, slow-paced plot is dressed up with pathological gore to awake interest every... Read more
Published on 16 Nov 2001

2.0 out of 5 stars Not quite the Art of Darkness
Whoever said this was a literary equivalent of the 'Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' wannabe films that have sprouted like a forest of diseased exit wounds in this city of ours... Read more
Published on 11 Sep 2001

1.0 out of 5 stars Hipper-than-thou nonsense
What a dissapointing read. The author seemed to feel that painting a cool contemporary feel was more important than a decent plot. Read more
Published on 28 Aug 2001

5.0 out of 5 stars A most excellent crime thriller, to be read now
This book is comtemporary, upto date and well thought out. Litt keeps you guessing to the very end. Read more
Published on 22 Aug 2001 by Mr A J Kirkpatrick

4.0 out of 5 stars Toby Litt is a very talented writer, so read this book
Don't be put off by the lad-lit, brit-lit, cool violence labels applied to Litt, he is a very thoughtful, precise writer, in search of a plot to match his obvious stylistic... Read more
Published on 11 Jul 2001

5.0 out of 5 stars Just excellent!
This isn't my normal kind of genre - but I loved it! It's certainly well written and it grabs your interest. Read more
Published on 13 Jun 2001

2.0 out of 5 stars Over-rated
...If this is the future of young writing it stands no comparison with The Beach. As a crime novel the plot was far fetched and became more so as we reached the denouement. Read more
Published on 22 Feb 2001

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