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21 kirjaa tekijältä Joseph Connolly
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE - AS IF THE ROYLE FAMILY WERE WRITTEN BY MARTIN AMIS!'Vibrant tragicomic slices of cosmopolitan Englishness' Independent on Sunday'A rich and compelling drama of life' Daily Mail'Connolly has a keen sense of the hushed emotional tenderness of English life and our silent shattering pain' Sunday TelegraphJim and Milly. Stan and Jane. Jonathan and Fiona. Winter, 1959. Three married couples: each living in England's Lane, each with an only child, and each attending to family, and their livelihoods - the ironmonger's, the sweetshop and the butcher's. Each of them hiding their lies, disguising sin, coping in the only way they know how.
In the kitchen Gillian loads the Hotpoint and frets about letting her baby go. In the bathroom Clifford styles his hair like Cliff's and wishes for a television. In the front room Arthur smokes a pipe and plots to fend off the loan sharks. In her bedroom Annette lifts up her nightie and heads for Clifford's room. In a tour-de-force of undressed taboo, four monologues intertwine to begin the story of an ordinary family in the fifties. How their seemingly contented, simple world bubbles under with odd desires and secret pangs - how it is shaken when they come to light - and how, step by step with the dawning sixties, life for all of them is whirled into a carousel of fashion, debauchery and explosive revelation.
Howard's getting it in the neck at home. Dotty isn't getting any at all. And Norman's getting it at work - from the girl under his desk. What they need is a holiday to let off a bit of steam. And steam is just what they get. As couples of varied ages, class and income set up their deckchairs on the beach, the scene is set for a few crossed wires, a wave of embarrassment and a lot of sand between the sheets. Sun, sea, sex, squabbling: Joseph Connolly's bestselling novel goes straight to the secret heart of that sticky farce of lust and snobbery: the British seaside.
On their way to a tedious dinner party with a couple they loathe, Barry and Susan find themselves in a stranglehold amidst a smashed bottle of whisky. As Barry's gambling debts propel him to desperate measures and Susan's boredom finds relief in Barry's best friend, the poor souls tumble from miserable mundanity into social apocalypse. In an acid portrayal of boozing, fornicating, money-grubbing and extreme marital angst, Connolly shows himself to be a master of the genre with wickedly comic panache.
My father is dead. I simply can't tell you how happy this makes me. Lucas Cage loses his father and gains a disused printing works in east London, the only part of his father's legacy he has ever cared for. Casting aside the shackles of his life, Lucas transforms the building, swimming against the tide of gentrification to create a refuge for the misfits and malcontents he meets: marital asylum seekers, a couple obsessed with resurrecting Blitz-era Britain, three washed-up cockney criminals - and the charismatic Jamie Dear: a man who shares a past as troubled as Lucas's own, and a gift for bringing people together. The nuclear family has exploded. Welcome to the factory for lost souls. The Works is an elegy to the inextricables of life - pasts and presents, husbands and wives, fathers and sons, hopes and fears - told with Joseph Connolly's inimitable gift for character and voice as he digs up the dirt on nineties London.
The luxury cruise ship Transylvania takes six days to cross the Atlantic - just enough time for the passengers to find their sea-legs and lose their heads. Whether it's husbands pining for their mistresses back on shore, stewards with a raging cabin fever or mothers sweating to outshine their daughters, they transform the Transylvania into a floating purgatory of Pacific proportions. S.O.S. is Joseph Connolly's brilliant boat-bound comedy, a novel of holiday-makers and holiday-haters running aground on each other's lives and loves. 'Getting away from it all' is hopeless - and hilarious - when you've brought it all on board with you.
The moment he spots Maria's long legs at a party, Jeremy knows he's done for. The moment she sees that look in his eyes, Maria knows she's in for a free ride. The moment she twigs Jeremy's sneaking around, his wife Anne thinks she knows he's having an affair with Nan - their nanny. And chucks Jeremy out. Like dropping a grenade into a pond, this sets off a ricochet of concentric calamity that changes Jeremy's life; and those of Anne, Maria, Nan, Max, Hugo and everyone else they know; leaving them in disarray, washed up or exactly where they were before. In razor-sharp comic style, Joseph Connolly sets up his characters like pawns in a devilish chess game, prodding them towards war, conquest, or merely in ever-maddening circles. Lust, manipulation and fear of being alone propel Jeremy in the most inextricable of purgatorial repetitons, until he seems to embody society's cruellest absurdities about the pointlessness of it all - forever going on.
A successful day for Emily - interior designer and total bitch - is throttling her husband Kevin and tormenting his best friend Raymond to their mutual satisfaction. A good day for Raymond is venting his frustrations on Emily's fine form and getting a glimpse of her even finer daughter Shelley. A tolerable day for Kevin is just avoiding Emily - until he meets a surprising young woman who sees through his dim wits to the kindly man beneath...Emily's a maelstrom of malice, but there's only so far she can push Kevin and Raymond before the storm finally breaks. Stripping the veneer of pretension and civility, Connolly's thrillingly repulsive characters are unveiled through breathless interior monologue to reveal the genuine and grotesque urges that drive them all into a violent climax.
London, 1939. Mary and Jack. In love, unmarried and happy. Until the outbreak of the Second World War. Jackie, ever the lad, is bent on escaping conscription, but the contacts he makes drag him ever deeper into a dangerous criminal underworld. Yet it is Mary who undertakes the most surprising transformation. Despite striving for normality, she must confront a set of choices that will lead to a backstreet abortion and an unexpected vocation. With every tone and cadence of this novel, from wireless to air-raid siren, Connolly conducts with masterful hand and compassionate grace the voices of a once hopeful working class couple - now blitzed, battered and breaking into a desperate new dawn.
His girlfriend commands that he marry her. His wife demands him home in time for tea. His blackmailer commandeers half of his secret earnings. Then he gets hit by a bus. All in all, it's not a good day for Eric. And once he's on crutches, it becomes impossible to juggle two lives, three women and one vicious gangster. Eric's double-decker life and triple-tangled lies drive him to a catastrophic collision in Joseph Connolly's wry and ingeniously plotted black comedy.
The sequel to the bestselling Summer Things. A summer of lust has given way to the winter of discontent. Brian and Dotty have lost everything and are seeing in the yuletide from a caravan on their friends' driveway. Howard and Lizzie have it all and they're not sharing - except for a lover or two. In a spirit of neighbourly envy, adulterous love and goodwill to oneself, it might be time to learn the true meaning of Christmas - whether they like it or not.
Susan wants another husband - which comes as a shock to the current one. A tale of a singular threesome.
Jerome K. Jerome is now best known as the author of the hilarious "Three Men in a Boat, to Say Nothing of the Dog". But he was more than just a one-hit wonder: he was the author of more than thirty books, including novels, short stories, essays and plays, as well as the founder and editor of two literary magazines. He counted J. M. Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling amongst his friends: quite an achievement for someone who had grown up in poverty and whose first job had been picking up the coal that fell off railway trucks. Joseph Connolly's masterful biography not only recounts the fascinating story of Jerome's life, but also analyses his literary output, from "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" to "My Life and Times", his autobiography, and was the first book to examine both.
Terence is sick of people making a fuss of Alexander. His looks. His money. His fame.Who wouldn't resent so successful a son?Even if he is only ten years old.Joseph Connolly's brilliant new comedy of manners weaves together a domestic tableaux of characters - those with old-fashioned manners, tabloid manners, and no manners at all - in a satire on oedipal envy, neighbourly rivalry and the shameless stupidity of our fame-fuelled society.
THE NEW NOVEL FROM THE BOLLINGER SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF ENGLAND'S LANE.'There's a lot of brilliantly observed detail... it's very funny and very sharp' Michael PalinGeorge is a fashion mad Beatles fan, selfish and cruel. Why his girlfriend Dorothy loves him is a mystery to her and to his best friend Sammy. When George callously chucks her he cannot anticipate that his life, post 1964, will never be the same. And forty-four years later, when George is sixty-four, rich and successful, his past will catch up with him and his family.'Connolly unfolds a rich and compelling drama of life that is anything but everyday' Daily Mail'It is Connolly's skill to get the reader to laugh at what should make you cry or at least wince' Times Literary Supplement
