The Sound of No Hands Clapping: A Memoir - Hardcover

Young, Toby

2.95

263 ratings by Goodreads

9780306814563: The Sound of No Hands Clapping: A Memoir

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0306814560 ISBN 13: 9780306814563

Publisher: Da Capo Pr, 2006

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Young is back with the eagerly awaited follow-up to his account of a hilariously failed attempt to conquer the Manhattan social and professional scene in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. All the elements that turned Toby's earlier memoir into a bestseller from coast to coast and on both sides of the Atlantic are back, too. Well, some things have changed for Toby-he has married his girlfriend from How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and now has two kids, and he has moved from the Manhattan that treated him none too kindly to London. But Toby remains Toby, and what Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair called Toby's "brown thumb" continues to work its magic, transforming opportunities into cringeworthy debacles and leading to situations that are classic Toby Young territory. Toby gleefully recounts such dubious journalistic assignments as posing as a patient at a penis-enlargement clinic and as a greeter at a Wal-Mart. He has misadventures in Los Angeles as a screenwriter for films that never quite get made, he's been a contestant on an abysmal reality show that absolutely no one watched, and he has acted in a one-man play that was utterly savaged by the critics. Yes, Toby has become a dutiful husband and a devoted dad, but he's as relentlessly self-sabotaging as ever, with a demonstrated knack for attracting misfortune, publicity-and devoted readers.

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Review:

'As a chronicle of ambition run amok it has no peer'
-- Sunday Tribune

'I liked it so much I sent Toby Young an e-mail congratulating
him' -- Telegraph

'Toby regales us with delicious drubbings, past and present,
delighting us with tales of his uproarious ineptitude ... unbelievably
humorous' -- Spectator

'Very funny ... we would all love to be as successful a failure as
he is' -- Sunday Express

'Young remains a solid comic writer with a winning awareness of
his own absurdity. I couldn't put it down' -- Time Out

`A fun and - if true - rather insightful account of the bitchy,
self-serving world of the London media set'
-- Metro

`If you like your reading to have a certain voyeurism, this is
probably a must'
-- Observer

`Only Young could have failed so spectacularly and turned the
experience into such a funny and addictively readable story' -- Evening Standard

`Side-splittingly funny. I laughed out loud several times in every
chapter' -- Daily Mail

`The doyen of Loser Lit is back, as bumptious as ever. And still
very, very funny' -- Sunday Times

Book Description:

* After the international success of HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE Toby Young returns with another hilarious memoir about social and professional failure

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