The Gift - Softcover

Flusfeder, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007140789 ISBN 13: 9780007140787

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2004

Synopsis

Problem: Best friends keep giving extremely generous gifts Solution: Give better ones in return

About this title

Review:

'The Gift starts as a comedy of manners and turns into a deep and surreal exposition of the cruelty of generosity ... The perfect present for your successful friends.' Louisa Young, Sunday Times

'Few novels excite us enough to make us want to retell them to anyone willing to listen. The Gift is such a novel. With gentle literary grace and great authority, Flusfeder spins reality into a dream and back again.' Elena Lappin, Guardian

'A black comedy of rare originality ... thoughtful, amusing, wry ... it has the makings of a cult classic. Read it and read it again.' Simon Humphreys, Mail on Sunday

'This could be the perfect gift to answer all gifts.'
Observer

'This fever dream of masculine anxiety and the bad manners of affluence resolves into something unexpectedly wise and generous: a complete story and a very good one.'

Jonathan Franzen

From the Back Cover:

Phillip has a lot on his mind. At home, in his unnecessarily large, excessively expensive house in south London, he is attempting to become a Taoist master of love with his wife, Alice, but his quest is forever being interrupted by the requests of his twin daughters – 'Can we have a pony, please?'; 'We want to go to boarding school'. At work, in his shed/office at the bottom of the garden, between countless games of Minesweeper and FreeCell, Phillip is trying to pay the mortgage by writing the instructions to Korean bread-making machines. And, at parties where he is concerned that he is not taken seriously – he is variously mistaken as a waiter and a nose doctor – Phillip tells the world he is in fact a screenwriter.

Above all, Phillip is worrying about his best friends Barry and Sean. They are rich, more successful than him and, most worryingly, they give great presents. Their gifts are always exquisite – a full set of Italian crockery, a handmade corkscrew from Venice; they give them on birthdays, at parties and quite often for no reason whatsoever; and, increasingly these presents break all bounds of generosity.

They are gifts that hurt a man's pride. They are gifts that Phillip is going to have to match, or even better.

"David Flusfeder has, with a quiet confidence that belies his considerable literary flair, slowly and methodically placed himself in the front rank of his literary generation. 'The Gift' is the best book you'll give yourself all year. Don't waste it on anyone else – they don't deserve it."
Will Self

"This fever dream of masculine anxiety and the bad manners of affluence resolves into something unexpectedly wise and generous: a complete story and a very good one."
Jonathan Franzen

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0007140789
• ISBN 13: 9780007140787
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320