Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints

Doonan, Simon

ISBN 10: 0743267044 / ISBN 13: 9780743267045

Published by Simon & Schuster, 2005

About this Item

Simon & Schuster, 2005; first edition, with full number line, SIGNED and inscribed by author on first page; xii, 284pp. Binding is tight, sturdy, and square; boards also very good; titling remains bright and bold. Exterior wear is very minor. Interior is free of markings. Ships same or next day from Dinkytown, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Seller Inventory # 324036

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743267044
• ISBN 13: 9780743267045
• Binding: hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed and inscribed by author
• Seller catalogs:
  • Essays/Memoirs

About this title

Synopsis

Proving his savoury wit and saucy prose in two previous books, Simon Doonan has established himself as one of today's most dazzling literary humorists. Now, in his breakthrough memoir, the writer whom Liz Smith calls 'the brashest and most brilliant thing in type' revisits his formative years and the defiantly eccentric, loveably odd family he calls his own. Long before he became a celebrity - as a social commentator on VH1 and as the marketing genius behind Barney's New York - Simon Doonan was a 'scabby kneed troll' mired in Reading. The essays in NASTY chronicle the misadventures of the Doonan clan in all their endearingly dysfunctional glory. Readers meet his mum Betty, whose gravity-defying, peroxide-yellow hairdo proudly announced to the world her innate sense of glamour; father Terry, an amateur vintner who transforms parsnips into the legendary Chateau Doonan; grandfather D.C., a betting man who plots to win his fortune by turning Simon into a jockey; and other assorted relatives exhibiting varying degrees of sanity. Fearing he will contract a genetically transmitted insanity bug, Doonan decamps with his flamboyant best friend Biddie to London, where he hopes to establish himself among the Beautiful People, those elusive creatures who luxuriate on floor pillows and amuse each other with bon mots. Throughout his memoir, Doonan continues his bumbling pursuit of the fabulous life, only to learn, in the end that perhaps the Beautiful People were the ones he left behind.

Review

"That Simon Doonan is a writer with a flair for the clever aphorism and a trenchant wit is no surprise. But that he is also capable of telling a tremendously moving tale is something of a revelation. It's all here: the inexorable bonds of family; Swinging London in all its Rita Tushingham glory; the calamities of AIDS..."Nasty" is a book for anyone who has ever yearned to transcend their own beginnings. In other words, if you were ever younger than you are now, you must read this book."-- David Rakoff, author of "Fraud"