The Portable Veblen: Shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016 - Softcover

McKenzie, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0008160392 ISBN 13: 9780008160395

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2017

Synopsis

A laugh-out-loud love story with big ideas - and squirrels

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016

Can squirrels speak? Do snails scream?

Will a young couple, newly engaged, make it to their wedding day? Will their dysfunctional families ruin everything? Will they be undone by the advances of a very sexy, very unscrupulous heiress to a pharmaceuticals corporation?

Is getting married even a remotely reasonable idea in the twenty-first century?

And what in the world is a ‘Veblen’ anyway?

‘Raw and weird and hilarious’ Guardian

‘A touching, wildly funny and peculiarly elegant look at the travails of love of all kinds’ Sunday Express

‘Elizabeth McKenzie is clearly some sort of genius’ Paul Murray

‘I can’t remember a book I enjoyed more’ Nina Stibbe

‘Seriously funny and extraordinarily well written’ Jonathan Franzen, Guardian books of the year

About this title

Review

‘Man oh man, do I love this book! Audacious, imaginative and totally wonderful’ Karen Joy Fowler

‘I can’t remember a book I enjoyed more’ Nina Stibbe

'Smart, funny, charming and profound. Elizabeth McKenzie is clearly some sort of genius’ Paul Murray

‘The squirreliest novel I ever read. I enjoyed it completely’ Ursula K. Le Guin

‘Raw and weird and hilarious . . . very entertaining’ Scarlett Thomas, Guardian

‘Ambitious, spirited, funny, daring’ Financial Times

‘A touching, wildly funny and peculiarly elegant look at the travails of love of all kinds’ Sunday Express

‘Utterly charming. A true joy of a book’ Irish Examiner

‘Full of life and humour and compassion’ Times Literary Supplement

‘Darkly funny, irrepressibly quirky and very, very hard to put down’ Sam Baker, The Pool

‘Quirky and smart. If you loved Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, you’ll love this’ Glamour

‘Wildly brilliant. Razor-sharp, intimate, hilarious and profound. Every page is a delight’ Emma Jane Unsworth

‘Terrifically entertaining . . . hard to resist’ Daily Mail

‘Offbeat, thoughtful, mischievous . . . McKenzie [has] a pin-sharp eye for the tragic-comic, and for dialogue’ Herald (Scotland)

‘A novel of festive originality’ The New York Times

‘Unforgettable. A wild ride that you will not want to miss’ San Francisco Chronicle

‘If The Portable Veblen has a flaw, it is that its caricatures are so on the nose as to make the reader hope to flee the human race’ Boston Globe

‘Oddball characters and plot turns abound, including talking squirrels and bureaucratic ironies worthy of "Catch-22." But a sober question occupies its core: Do our parents' best intentions do us harm?’ Minneapolis Star Tribune

‘Accurately and funnily capture[s] the complexities of modern families . . . The Corrections meets The Wallcreeper’ Huffington Post

From the Back Cover

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016 and the National Book Award 2016.

A riotously funny and deeply insightful adventure through capitalism, the medical industry, family, love, war and wedding-planning - from an electrically entertaining new voice Can squirrels speak? Do snails scream? Will a young couple, newly engaged, make it to their wedding day? Will their dysfunctional families ruin everything? Will they be undone by the advances of a very sexy, very unscrupulous heiress to a pharmaceuticals corporation? Is getting married even a remotely reasonable idea in the twenty-first century? And what in the world is a 'Veblen' anyway?

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0008160392
• ISBN 13: 9780008160395
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448