The Worms Can Carry Me To Heaven - Softcover

Warner, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0224071297 ISBN 13: 9780224071291

Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 2006

Synopsis

Manolo Follano, a 40-year-old Spanish roue, has built a comfortable life for himself in his hometown by the sea. His architectural design company is thriving, his suits are Italian linen, his cigars Cuban, he's on friendly terms with his two ex-wives and happily free to enjoy the charms of women much younger. For a playboy like Manolo - handsome, fastidious, opinionated and more than a little vain - to be told by his doctor and friend that he is HIV Positive is, it would seem, the end of everything. In Alan Warner's fifth novel, however, this devastating news is only the beginning. Manolo strolls around his familiar haunts recalling, with Proustian clarity, the loves of his life, as he prepares to tell each of them his terrible secret - all the while bracing himself for the final reckoning, and the thin hope of redemption. In a series of vivid, erotic, hilarious flashbacks, he plays back his life in glowing technicolor with each wild and glorious set-piece building towards a complete picture of a life - flawed, certainly, but passionate, richly imagined and deeply humane. A novel of stunning visual invention that manages to be both provocative and profound, both shocking and riotously funny, "The Worms Can Carry Me To Heaven" is further proof of Alan Warner's prodigal gifts of spirit and imagination, and his position in the first rank of contemporary writers.

About this title

Review:

"... funny, moving, swollen with lust and high anxities, sombre in moments, momentously memorable in passages of lyrical intensity..." -- Scotsman, Tom Adair

"...it is very entertaining, but to be surprised, disgusted, challenged: reminded of our reasons for reading novels at all" -- Saturday Telegraph rvd by Lucy Daniel 

"Alan Warner tackles an egoist coming to terms with HIV with typical black humour." -- Hannah Lack, Dazed & Confused

"Warner displays enormous artistry." -- Independent on Sunday rvd by Matt Thorne

"episodes are finely written and read truly" -- The Sunday Times, Tom Deveson

'Searing...A vivid portrait of wrestling with an imperfect life in the face of an ordinary death...Very much worth the wait.’ -- The Literary Review

there is wonderful writing here... -- The Spectator by Carole Angier

‘Darkly funny and vividly imaginative story.’ -- Melissa McClements in The Financial Times Summer Reading

‘Funny, profound, shocking and provocative’ -- Henry Sutton - Esquire

‘contains beautiful writing...moments of superb deadpan comedy’. -- Guardian Saturday rvd by Niall Griffiths

From the Publisher:

'A savage, surreal and very original imagination.' Sunday Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0224071297
• ISBN 13: 9780224071291
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400