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DeWitt, Patrick Ablutions ISBN 13: 9781847086341

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9781847086341: Ablutions
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A nameless barman tends a decaying bar in Hollywood and takes notes for a book about his clientele. Initially, he is morbidly amused by watching the regulars roll in and fall into their nightly oblivion, pitying them and their loneliness. In hopes of uncovering their secrets and motives, he establishes tentative friendships with them. He also knocks back pills indiscriminately and treats himself to gallons of Jameson's. But as his tenure at the bar continues, he begins to lose himself, trapped by addiction and indecision. When his wife leaves him, he embarks on a series of squalidly random sexual encounters and a downward spiral of self-damage and irrational violence. To cleanse himself and save his soul, he attempts to escape ...

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Review:
PRAISE FOR "ABLUTIONS": ""Ablutions" is funny and precarious, a novel that shifts the ground under the reader's feet, a naked-lightbulb self-examination that doesn't shy from high comedy. DeWitt has a gimlet eye and a dead aim with words."-- Luc Sante, author of "Low Life""" "Patrick deWitt's writing is deeply charismatic -- a coiled ramble of note perfect sentences, mysterious and burbling declarative tones, the saddest humor imaginable, and the strange physical proportions of a magician's top hat. I was equally taken aback by the needling brilliance that surfaces at its every turn and riveted by the brains and heart it must have taken to finesse such a clearly broken down yet perfectly clear and penetrating world. I love this novel very much." -- Dennis Cooper "" "Patrick deWitt is the 21st century poet of Hollywood's desperate souls, the misbegotten, broken, and the lost. He writes with a fierce compassion about people treading the vague boundary between homicide and self-destruction, loveless sex and sexless love, all lined up and looking into our own culturally shared abyss. Beware, beware. But read "Ablutions,"" --Chris Offutt, author of "No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home" ""Ablutions" is a novel about the deteriorating health of our livers and the malaise of our dreams. Perverse in its humor, but ultimately about our potential for redemption, it's riotously funny and cripplingly sad all at the same time. Patrick DeWitt takes on our diseases and depravity with prose that may yet rescue us from the gutter." -- Salvador Plascencia, author of "The People of Paper""" PRAISE FOR PATRICK DEWITT "A hypnotic cross between Lorrie Moore and Denis Johnson."--"Seattle"" Weekly""" "Somethingtruly fresh, something that gave me a reading experience as shivery and enlivening as I've had in a long time."--Dennis Cooper, author of "Closer, The Sluts, "and "God Jr." PRAISE FOR"ABLUTIONS" ..". dark and provocative ... deWitt has painted a portrait of the human condition ... And ABLUTIONS has achieved something remarkable." --"The New York Times Book Review"..". deWitt's writing is sharp and bitter and funny ... " --"Los Angeles Times " "DeWitt's dirty realism makes me want to roll in the mud with him. Brilliant." --Gary Shteyngart, author of"Absurdistan" "Viciously hilarious ... deWitt's portrayal of the drinking life is staunchly unromantic." --"Time Out New York"(Five stars; Book of the day) "These scenes are stunningly depicted ... deWitt writes beautifully about ugliness, and his book casts a haunting spell." --"Booklist" "DeWitt's style of prose is refreshing and more like real life speak than most books, without losing the necessary descriptiveness to relay the feel and pure nuttiness of the situation inside the Hollywood bar where the scenes are set." --"About.com" "Ablutions is like an intense art-house movie, where the lead
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'An astonishingly original and blackly comic debut novel' - Big Issue

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  • PublisherGranta Books
  • Publication date2012
  • ISBN 10 1847086349
  • ISBN 13 9781847086341
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages176
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9780547335711: Ablutions: Notes for a Novel

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