Going Loco: A Comedy of Terrors (Wheeler Large Print Book Series) - Softcover

Truss, Lynne

3.19

150 ratings by Goodreads

9781597220552: Going Loco: A Comedy of Terrors (Wheeler Large Print Book Series)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597220558 ISBN 13: 9781597220552

Publisher: Wheeler Pub Inc, 2005

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When Belinda, a writer married to Stefan, a geneticist, innocently hires Linda to relieve her of the domestic chores which obstruct her work, she gets more than she bargained for. For Linda has the knack of gilding drudgery with glamour, thereby upstaging Belinda's literary labours. Linda proves to be an instant hit, taking Belinda's mother shopping, redecorating to wild acclaim, and capturing the heart of the neglected Stefan. Soon she extends her influence beyond the house: attending a literary function in Belinda's stead, she becomes the new darling of the chattering classes, and even appears on the Late Review.Lynne Truss's third novel is a pointed comedy about dual identities, life choices, and ultimately time.

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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 doppelg�nger. 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:

Searchers after lightness, brightness and wit will find all three ... a plot whose coincidences and misunderstandings outnumber those in a P.G. Wodehouse novel (Maureen Owen, Daily Mail)

Hilarious ... as witty as a knot garden ... Lots of good jokes. I loved it (Valerie Grove, The Times)

Full of beans ... wonderful dash and confidence (Daily Telegraph)

Witty, surprising, oddly compassionate and hugely assured (Sunday Times)

Lyrical comedy ... wonderfully inventive jeu d'esprit (Independent)

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