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''A virtual who's who of the latest literary guard, this anthology bristles with the crackly talent and confidence of both the newly and the already fabulous. Included are Hornby himself, Melissa Bank, Dave Eggers, Helen Fielding and Zadie Smith ... the voices are consistent, fresh, particular ... each one surprises and entertains ... None disappoints'
Publisher's Weekly
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Hear the Prime Minister explain to the House why he did a runner from Greenford Park service station and hitched a lift with a fifteen-year-old girl, as imagined by Robert Harris. Listen to someone who has a small hostile creature in his room, as told by Roddy Doyle.
Twelve voices. Twelve completely new stories, narrated by twelve different characters. All written by twelve of the most exciting and popular writers around - including Helen Fielding, Zadie Smith, John O'Farrell, Patrick Marber, Irvine Welsh, Melissa Bank and Colin Firth.
This sparkling collection has been put together by Nick Hornby who also contributes an introduction about TreeHouse, an organisation that offers a unique and pioneering approach to the education of children with autism. £1 will go to TreeHouse with every copy sold of Speaking with the Angel.
'Some of the sexiest young names on both sides of the Atlantic - Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers and Melissa Bank - make an appearance ... in this luminary collection'
Independent on Sunday
'The fashionable literary success of the moment is a new book called Speaking to the Angel, a Penguin volume of a dozen short stories by a coterie of stars that includes Zadie Smith, Colin Firth, Irvine Welsh, Robert Harris, Helen Fielding, Roddy Doyle and Patrick Marber, all friends of Nick Hornby, who also wrote one of the stories and who put the project together. The book has been out less than a month but the temperature is rising ... Speaking with the Angel is a rather remarkable project altogether. Hornby made his friends write to raise money for TreeHouse, a London school for severely autistic children. /.../ Connections made the book possible, too. Thriller writer Robert Harris, for example, is his brother-in-law, Colin Firth played the lead in the film version of Hornby's Fever Pitch, while another monologue-ist, John O'Farrell, the novelist, television scriptwriter and satirist, is an old school friend. The monologues are eclectic. Firth, Marber and, oddly, Zadie Smith, have all written about male adolescence; Irvine Welsh's piece is about a violent hater of homosexuals condemned to rape his male friends in the afterlife; Roddy Doyle writes on midlife crisis; and Hornby's piece, Nipple Jesus, is a parable about a security man guarding a piece of dodgy modern art'
Daily Telegraph
'For this collection of short stories Nick Hornby has enticed words from the pens of some of his favourtie writers: Melissa Bank, playwright Patrick Marber, Helen Fielding, Irvine Welsh and even Colin Firth (yes, Mr Darcy to you). Unusually, there is a common element to all these stories in that most of the authors employ an upfront, colloquial style. Very readable and the quality shows. Bur what you're dying to know is whether Firth's writing is as dishy as his acting. Well, yes, it's not half bad. Without the remotest trace of sentimentality, he writes about a schoolboy entranced by his dying grandmother's storytelling'
Daily Mail
'It was smart of Hornby to enlist this particular group of writers ... thanks to their pitch-perfect voices and their razor-sharp wits, many of these stories are hilarious ... Kinetic, witty and, most important, soulful in unexpected ways, these stories help us transcend the mundane and look toward the heavens, smiling'
Newsday |
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Speaking With the Angel - review and interview with Nick
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,394220,00.html
Book Reporter Review
http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/1573228583.asp
Zadie Smith
http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/author/0,5917,861678,00.html
Zadie Smith
http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,0_1000049267,00.html
Dave Eggers
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/
Helen Fielding
http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/author/0,5917,-203,00.html
Robert Harris
http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=12040
Melissa Bank
http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,0_1000037544,00.html
Roddy Doyle
http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/author/0,5917,-60,00.html
Irvine Welsh
http://www.irvinewelsh.com/index.php
Colin Firth
http://www.contactmusic.com/new/artist.nsf/artistnames/colin%20firth
John O'Farrell
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Archive/0,5673,-461,00.html
Giles Smith
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0330339176/202-6703946-4785449
Patrick Marber
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/dramauk/marberp1.htm |
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