What do you think?
Rate this book
Stuff
When Emily, a successful interior designer and utter bitch, has finished throttling her startlingly dim-witted husband Kevin one morning and packed him off for a day's labour, she never expects him to achieve anything but the usual myriad let alone seduce a young, attractive woman in Portobello Road.
And when she's done screwing her husband's best friend Raymond in his dingy office, little does she know Raymond will be consecutively screwed over by his shrewd, secretly lustful PA with a fusion of blackmail and bankruptcy.
Emily's a maelstrom of malice and cares not for the mess she leaves behind. But there's only so far she can push Kevin and Raymond before the storm finally breaks.
With vicious flair, Connolly hurtles his cast of thrillingly repulsive characters into a plot of adultery, sadism and revenge, speeding towards a violent climax. This is a world where pretension has the biggest price tag and reason has been stripped, revarnished and hung with a darling, fake chandelier.
And when she's done screwing her husband's best friend Raymond in his dingy office, little does she know Raymond will be consecutively screwed over by his shrewd, secretly lustful PA with a fusion of blackmail and bankruptcy.
Emily's a maelstrom of malice and cares not for the mess she leaves behind. But there's only so far she can push Kevin and Raymond before the storm finally breaks.
With vicious flair, Connolly hurtles his cast of thrillingly repulsive characters into a plot of adultery, sadism and revenge, speeding towards a violent climax. This is a world where pretension has the biggest price tag and reason has been stripped, revarnished and hung with a darling, fake chandelier.
340 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 1997
2 people are currently reading
25 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 9, 2014
A review quoted on the back cover of this book hits the nail on the head as far as I’m concerned: “It is Connolly’s skill to get the reader to laugh at what should make you cry or at least wince”. I did laugh – it was all funny but there were some bits where the laughter meter hit ten – the two policemen with their misplaced vowels...the éclair on the tea trolley...Rambling Rosie at the end. But I felt uncomfortable about it. Given that the very first scene has hapless husband Kevin being brutally attacked by his wife Emily, who is armed with a coffee table, it doesn’t feel like the stuff of comedy. People tend to overlook the many male victims of domestic violence, and by making it funny, this book does those victims no favours. I thought to myself: what if you swopped the genders around in the book – and Emily was the one being attacked with a coffee table – it’s unlikely this book would have made it to publication, and instead would be exchanged under plain cover in murky corners like the most illicit porn. If anything, it underlined how male-female equality is still a way off.
As I was reading it felt as though I was clinging on to a hot air balloon, gliding over the rooftops, every time there was an injection of humour it kept the balloon buoyed up and everything was great; on the other hand every time the book’s resident creep Raymond invoked the C-word or indulged in any kind of sexual activity, air belched out of the balloon and I was barking my shins on the chimney tops.
The other notable feature of this novel is authorial voice – it’s not a first person narrative, nor is it entirely a third-person omniscient narrative. Instead the narrator hovers amongst the characters, like a puppeteer who can’t keep his bonce out of view, offering chirpy little observations. There were shades of Harlan Coben, but what it reminded me of most insistently was the Mr Men books. It was all the “Do you know what happens next? Shall I tell you?” type of thing that made this read a bit like a worked-up Mr Men book for adults (that would be “Mr Henpecked” or quite possibly “Little Miss Repulsive”). It works the other way too, with a bit of name substitution: “Do you know the thing that really got on Mr Tickle’s tits? The thing that was really bloody getting to him? I think you maybe do.....”
I left it a few days after finishing reading before reviewing this book. I wanted to get the laughter out of my head to see if it still seemed funny in retrospect. I’ve got to admit it does. (Fairy liquid in the whipping cream. Snort.) But I still feel guilty.
As I was reading it felt as though I was clinging on to a hot air balloon, gliding over the rooftops, every time there was an injection of humour it kept the balloon buoyed up and everything was great; on the other hand every time the book’s resident creep Raymond invoked the C-word or indulged in any kind of sexual activity, air belched out of the balloon and I was barking my shins on the chimney tops.
The other notable feature of this novel is authorial voice – it’s not a first person narrative, nor is it entirely a third-person omniscient narrative. Instead the narrator hovers amongst the characters, like a puppeteer who can’t keep his bonce out of view, offering chirpy little observations. There were shades of Harlan Coben, but what it reminded me of most insistently was the Mr Men books. It was all the “Do you know what happens next? Shall I tell you?” type of thing that made this read a bit like a worked-up Mr Men book for adults (that would be “Mr Henpecked” or quite possibly “Little Miss Repulsive”). It works the other way too, with a bit of name substitution: “Do you know the thing that really got on Mr Tickle’s tits? The thing that was really bloody getting to him? I think you maybe do.....”
I left it a few days after finishing reading before reviewing this book. I wanted to get the laughter out of my head to see if it still seemed funny in retrospect. I’ve got to admit it does. (Fairy liquid in the whipping cream. Snort.) But I still feel guilty.
May 25, 2021
The story centres around the exploits of an interior decorator (Emily), her husband (Kevin), their family and their acquaintances. It is apparently meant to be "very funny" and "crackling with wit".
I couldn't have cared less about all the people in this novel. They are a collection of amoral, self-centred, barely believable, bourgeois halfwits. This author has also written a book about P. G. Wodehouse; perhaps this is an attempt to emulate the great man. In fact it reads more like a lewd, unfunny Brian Rix farce. Hated it.
I couldn't have cared less about all the people in this novel. They are a collection of amoral, self-centred, barely believable, bourgeois halfwits. This author has also written a book about P. G. Wodehouse; perhaps this is an attempt to emulate the great man. In fact it reads more like a lewd, unfunny Brian Rix farce. Hated it.
October 23, 2021
Loved the style but hated the brutality of the story
January 10, 2009
Leider passiert es seit einiger Zeit häufiger, was ich früher äußerst selten tat: ich lese Bücher nicht zu Ende. Liegt das an der schlechten Auswahl der Bücher, an meiner derzeitigen Leselust-Verfassung, daran dass ich soo viele ungelesene Bücher habe, dass mir die Zeit zu schade ist, oder woran?
Immerhin hab ich es hier zumindest bis etwa S. 70 geschafft. Die Familien- und anderen Verhältnisse sind ziemlich obstrus, für mich kein Lesespass.
Immerhin hab ich es hier zumindest bis etwa S. 70 geschafft. Die Familien- und anderen Verhältnisse sind ziemlich obstrus, für mich kein Lesespass.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews