GOING LOCO - Softcover

Truss

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007355262 ISBN 13: 9780007355266

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2010

Synopsis

A wonderful comic novel from the bestselling author of ‘Eats Shoots & Leaves’.

Belinda Johansson is a woman frantic, overwhelmed by the demands of work and home. Having it all? Pah. Belinda doesn't want any of it. Deep in research for her magnum opus - a definitive account of the doppelgänger in classic gothic fiction - she fails to notice the echoes of these ghoulish tales disturbingly close at hand. For not only is the cleaning lady taking over her life, but the identity of her husband, Stefan, is also in question. Is he a harmless geneticist from Sweden, or actually a cunning clone? Why is the cleaning lady's previous employer having a breakdown, and what on earth has the rat circus got to do with any of this?

About this title

Review:

In late 1976 a German newspaper broke the story that three members of ABBA had been killed in a plane crash at Berlin's Templehof Airport (Frida survived, horribly disfigured, if you're wondering) and that they had been silently replaced by imposters. A rival hypothesis had it that ABBA were the studio creation of some particularly ugly Swedes and that the smiling happy people on those videos were in fact actors. If Lynne Truss doesn't know these rumours about double ABBAs, then there's something distinctly uncanny about her new novel ...

Belinda Johansson is a happily married Claphamite writer, a teensy bit self-absorbed, who decides to abandon her girls' horsey stories to investigate the literary life of the doppelgänger. Around the same time, she hires Linda as her cleaner and then watches helplessly as Linda gradually takes over her life, becoming Be-Linda. Meanwhile her actress friend Maggie is sleeping with the double of her therapist's husband and investigations suggest that Belinda's husband Stefan is not in fact a Swedish geneticist at all ... Trying out a hitherto unknown ABBA-inflected Anglo-Swedish idiomatic, Truss tightens up all her narrative strands to breaking point and then stands well back, letting them unwind at breakneck speed. Funny, pacy, scary, neurotic and addictive. Just like ABBA. -- Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk

Review:

‘A classic comic novel, unashamed, exuberant, fiendishly clever, and a joy to read.‘ Daily Telegraph

‘“Going Loco” is wonderfully underplayed, unpredictable and unexpectedly sinister.’ Sunday Express

'Sings with glittering prose... delicious.' Time Out

'A complex plot, chock-full of “characters”, slapstick and mystery... achieves laughs through real inventiveness.' The Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0007355262
• ISBN 13: 9780007355266
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256