| Description |
0140140492 From Publishers Weekly With novelists A. S. Byatt and Salman Rushdie and Waterstone's marketing director John Mitchinson, Granta editor Buford chose the "best" 20 British novelists under the age of 40 (see p. 81 for details on the controversy the list generated in England). Readers should approach this Granta issue as a smorgasbord of sorts: samples of fiction, essays and drama on a wide variety of themes are thrown together here, and while they are generally well-crafted and clever they are also frequently not the writers' most exciting efforts. Iain Banks's protagonist is a five-year-old boy who panics when his friend slips through the ice; Anne Billson's self-described "born-again virgin," who hasn't had sex in years, finds herself pregnant; and, at 16, Esther Freud's heroine "had tried every drug she had heard of. She was free to begin her own life." Helen Simpson depicts a harried young mother's feeling of self-obliteration; Jeanette Winterson reports on sex with her lesbian lover Picasso ("She rushes for me bull-subtle, butching at the gate as if she's come to stud."); Hanif Kureishi probes the Beatles mystique; and Adam Mars-Jones's whacky, thrifty protagonist returns to the store the meat cleaver that her boyfriend used to slit his wrists. Photos not seen by PW. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the Paperback edition. |
