Imago Bird

Catastrophe Practice #2

by Nicholas Mosley

This vivid and strikingly witty novel examines the contradictions between the public face and the private experience. Nephew to the prime minister of England, eighteen-year-old Bert tries to make sense of the grown-up world around him, a colorful crowd of television personalities, politicians, young Trotskyites, pop stars, and eccentric relatives. With the help of his laconic psychoanalyst, Bert questions the relation between exterior and interior reality, while Mosley himself questions art's ability to convey these different realities. Both Bert and Mosley triumph over these challenges by the end of this engaging and innovative novel.

Genres: Fiction, British Literature, Novels

186 pages, Paperback

First published August 29, 1986

About the author

Nicholas Mosley was educated at Eton and Oxford. He served in Italy during World War II, and published his first novel, Spaces of the Dark, in 1951. His book Hopeful Monsters won the 1990 Whitbread Award.

Mosley was the author of several works of nonfiction, most notably the autobiography Efforts at Truth and a biography of his father, Sir Oswald Mosley, entitled Rules of the Game/Beyond the Pale.

Reviews

[Hillary]

I'll confess that I didn't finish reading this. It may have gotten better, but I just couldn't do it. I really wanted to like this book, but I found myself incredibly annoyed and disappointed and I had to just put it down.

[Wim]

leuk boekje over een bijdehante stotterende 18-jarige man die vanalles denkt

[greg]

seriously. fuck this book.