From Publishers Weekly
Black comedy meets social satire meets British farce in this winning novel by the author of Man Kills Woman, which shows how one man's generosity can become the source of another man's insanity. Phillip, an ex-football (as in soccer) star and a vaguely hapless instruction manual writer, is best friends with couple Barry and Sean, who are so rich and nice that they shower Phillip and his family with lavish gifts-skiing vacations, rare Chinese carvings and priceless Venetian corkscrews. With each new present he receives, Phillip becomes more obsessed with finding the perfect return gift. Repeated failures leave him so overwhelmed by gift inadequacy ("I had lost. I had been defeated utterly... I was the inferior man") that his attempts at reciprocation begin to look more like revenge. A sketchy fellow named Carlo-whom Phillip meets in jail after a dinner party gone awry-feeds Phillip's anxieties, and soon Phillip is sneaking into Barry and Sean's home in the middle of the night to perform a "creepy-crawly": shifting around their personal possessions and inadvertently killing one of the chinchilla rabbits he'd given them as a gift. Flusfeder's delightfully spare prose makes room, too, for the search for cult hero and erstwhile Pink Floyd guitarist Syd Barrett, with whom Barry is obsessed; movie world excesses, displayed by Barry and Sean's fancy friends; parenting anxiety; and lots of Taoist sex-though why Phillip's wife, Alice, remains eternally willing despite his near-psychosis is a bit of a mystery. This is a witty, razor-sharp novel, with just the right amount of tenderness.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Phillip, the happily married father of twin girls, likes to try on professions at cocktail parties, telling people that he is a designer of Chinese gardens or a screenwriter. In fact, he writes manuals for Korean bread-making machines. When his wealthy friends, Barry and Sean, make a habit out of treating Phillip and his family to fabulous Swiss skiing vacations and bringing them artifacts such as a costly Venetian corkscrew, Phillip's pride takes a serious hit, and he develops a severe case of "gift inadequacy." Soon he turns the whole enterprise into a mad contest, trying to think up clever items to give them in return, even going so far as to stalk reclusive rock star Syd Barrett with the intention of whisking him to a private meeting with Pink Floyd fan Barry. Flusfeder's farcical morality tale is darkly comedic but also surprisingly sweet in all the right places. Phillip, especially, is a huge draw, and his increasingly embarrassing antics may remind readers of Larry David from the TV program
Curb Your Enthusiasm. Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
