Exquisite Corpse

by Stella Duffy

Loughborough Junction, summer 2013. A shopkeeper has gone missing and rumour is rife. What happened to him? Who has the motive and who the means to do him in? Has he been done in? And where will everyone get their fags, booze and lottery tickets without him? Local artist Beth Lamb sets out to investigate. But when you play detective in your own neighbourhood, things are bound to get complicated...

Exquisite Corpse: Or, How Not to Kill Your Neighbours is Southbank Centre's first ever novel, written on Twitter by members of the public as part of the 2013 Festival of Neighbourhood. Curated by ten leading novelists - Stella Duffy, Alex Preston, Kamila Shamsie, Stuart Evers, Naomi Alderman, Vanessa Gebbie, Marcel Theroux, G Willow Wilson, Matt Haig and Joe Dunthorne - this unique publication brings together ideas of collaboration, participation and community... and is a thrilling read too!

73 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 7, 2013

About the author

Stella Duffy was born in London and grew up in New Zealand. She has lived and worked in London since the mid-1980s. She has written seventeen novels, over seventy short stories, and devised and/or written fourteen plays. The Room of Lost Things and State of Happiness were both longlisted for the Orange Prize, and she has twice won Stonewall Writer of the Year. She has twice won the CWA Short Story Dagger. Stella is the co-founder of the Fun Palaces campaign for cultural democracy. Her latest novel is Lullaby Beach (Virago).
She is also a yoga teacher, teaching workshops in yoga for writing, and a trainee Existential Psychotherapist, her ongoing doctoral research is in the embodied experience of being postmenopausal.

Reviews

[Denise · Rating 1 out of 5]

Carl

it was a painful read that I only bothered to finish because I'm afflicted with the inability to not finish a book once I have started to read it. a terrible thing to be cursed with I assure you

[Jenny T. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I understand that this was a "cooperative" type of novel contributed to by several different authors. This "mystery" was set in Brixton, England, and had some promising scenes, but overall the plot was too fractured for me to get too interested in it. I don't like guacamole and I don't like this book.

[Nicole · Rating 1 out of 5]

Utter CRAP

This book had the most disjointed plot I have ever encountered. Character development was poor supporting an apparent mish mash of storylines. A most tedious and frustrating read. Unfortunately, a zero star rating is not possible so I had to settle for a 1 star rating.

[Carla · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is by far, the worst book I have read in 2021. That’s the nicest thing I can say about it.

[Alice Ughi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a short story that would be nice to read for everyone who has lived or used to go out in the Brixton area. As many other readers the plot itself appears plain and smooth, not particularly intriguing, but I still found it a pleasant readable book.