Talking About it (Hesperus Fiction) (Hesperus Contemporary Series) - Hardcover

Tim Parks

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1843917041 ISBN 13: 9781843917045

Publisher: Hesperus Press Ltd, 2005

Synopsis

Collected here for the first time the best from Tim Parks's short fiction, spanning across his entire literary career and enriched by new stories written specifically for this publication. The title story of the collection, Talking about It, presents two friends, George and Michael, meeting ritually in a pub every night after a game of squash. While George recounts his increasingly extravagant sexual experiences, Michael listens on, meditating on how to redeem his boring and somewhat uneventful life. But then one day the tables turn, and Michael finds a way to outfox his friend and transfix his attention with a very interesting story...Whether describing the simmering warfare in an Italian condominium, the problems and pleasures of adultery, or the trappings of the generation game, these stories reveal Tim Parks's deeply-felt preoccupations with the inner workings of the human psyche and the dynamics of human relations.

About this title

Review:

'Parks's short fiction confirms his credentials as an acute chronicler of midlife disillusionment' --The Guardian

'...the flatness of Park's diction and the extremities of emotion - grief, lust, anger, betrayal - that his stories describe is unnerving, almost pornographic, to read. The cumulative effect is strangely addictive, however - bathos jostling pathos in a stylised rendition of the random savagery of real life.' --The Telegraph

'This catch-all volume is clever and readable throughout' --Kirkus Review

About the Author:

Novelist and translator Tim Parks is well known for his writing on contemporary Italian life. His novel 'Europa' was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1997.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hesperus Press Ltd
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1843917041
• ISBN 13: 9781843917045
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 356