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Straight White Male

Straight White Male

by JohnNiven (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2013

    $3.46
Synopsis

Kennedy Marr is a novelist from the old school. Irish, acerbic, and a borderline alcoholic and sex-addict, his mantra is drink hard, write hard and try to screw every woman you meet. He's writing film scripts in LA, fucking, drinking and insulting his way through Californian society, but also suffering from writers block and unpaid taxes. Then a solution presents itself - Marr is to be the unlikely recipient of the W. F. Bingham Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Modern Literature, an award worth half a million pounds. But it does not come without a price: he must spend a year teaching at the English university where his ex-wife and estranged daughter now reside. As Kennedy acclimatises to the sleepy campus, inspiring revulsion and worship in equal measure, he's forced to reconsider his precarious lifestyle. Incredible as it may seem, there might actually be a father and a teacher lurking inside this 'preening, narcissistic, priapic, sociopath'. Or is there. Straight White Male is a no-holds-barred look into the mid-life crisis and the contemporary male sexual psyche. It is a brilliant new satire from one of Britain's sharpest writers.

$3.46

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 384
 Publisher: William Heinemann
Published: 15 Aug 2013
ISBN 10: 0434022861
ISBN 13: 9780434022861
Book Overview: Another brilliant comic satire, but Niven's most accessible yet.

Media Reviews
Straight White Male is a heartbreaker; a poignant literary treatise on the all-too-mortal battle between human individual desire and social need, disguised as a high-octane novel of laddish excess. -- Irvine Welsh There's nothing faster, sadder or funnier than John Niven on men. I cried three times and laughed fifty. Magnificent. -- Caitlin Moran John Niven has much, much more fun with Kennedy's drinking, fornicating, fighting, time-wasting antics than with his putative rehabilitation, and the reader does, too. We can't help rooting for Kennedy, a seducer but never a misogynist; a charmer who rushes at life with zest and brio ... Straight White Male is a sharp and knowing satire of the film industry, publishing and academia ... Thoroughly enjoyable. -- Suzi Feay Guardian It takes confidence to write a book critiquing books and writers, with a central character who's abundantly free with his views, but Niven shouldn't be underestimated...The tone here is authentic ... Funny and angry, for sure, yet also thought and humane ... Straight White Male is strong indeed. The Times Straight White Male is in some ways a return to the coruscating satirical landscape of Niven's debut, yet blended with a maturity and emotional depth that will have the reader shedding a tear as well as laughing in guilty outrage ...[Niven] creates a truly moving examination of male midlife crisis, and what it means to be a son, a father, a husband and all the rest. Hilarious and heartfelt in equal measure, this is another candidate for novel of the year. The Big Issue With Straight White Male John Niven takes humour to another level ...Cleverly combining side-splitting humour and unexpected poignancy Niven's assessment of the excesses of the male psyche is one of the best things I have read in a long time ... Straight White Male had me laughing, crying, cringing and blushing all at once. Stylist, ***** review Uproariously funny, this brims with black comedy, but has an incredibly moving story of redemption. Sunday Mirror John Niven is probably the most exciting British writer working today and Straight White Male is addictive, biting, scathing, hilarious and true. I wish I'd never read it so I could read it all again. -- Danny Wallace The most loveable rogue since John Self in Money. Funny as hell and moving. -- Ian Rankin Deliciously hyperbolic, obscenely funny, unexpectedly affecting. Niven never, ever, pulls a punch. -- Rupert Thomson The prose is quick, with a distant narrative voice controlling the multiple characters with such assurance that it becomes a character in itself. There are some car-crash scenes that fans of Niven's work will be familiar with, but he carefully balances farce with emotive drama, and as Marr begins to plummet towards rock bottom, he's left to deal with consequences that prove no one can have everything ... For pure entertainment it's a triumph. The List It's an incredible piece of satire, this time about the Hollywood film industry, with a protagonist easily as vile as 'Kill your Friends Stelfox ... Niven created a full-on flesh-and-blood, multilayered, breathing and growing character with depth to his soul that he himself needs to uncover in equally funny and agonising steps, sucked in by his contempt and debauchery, only to find himself struggling to dig his way out of the mire of consequences and heartbreak ... Straight White Male is a novel that has ripped right through me. Pattis Blog A sharp satire. Esquire [A] page-turning satire that's a masterclass in plate-spinning comic timing. Metro Straight White Male revisits the familiar Niven world ... but this time with a more mature edge - this is a novel about family, growing up, and even love - and a smart assault on academia and the nature of literature ... It's as though Martin Amis decided after Money that being entertaining as well as smart was the way to go ... Most fun. -- David Quantick Q Magazine
Author Bio
John Niven was born in Irvine, Ayrshire. He is the author of the novella Music from Big Pink and the novels Kill Your Friends, The Amateurs, The Second Coming, Cold Hands and Straight White Male.