What's it Like Out?

What's it Like Out?

by PenelopeGilliatt (Author)

Synopsis

Originally published in 1968, What's It Like Out? is the first of Penelope Gilliatt's celebrated short-story collections. In these blithe, glitteringly laconic tales we meet Fred and Arthur, comedians entwined in a relationship as symbiotic as the double act they perform; an adoring husband and wife whose relationship has haplessly degenerated into obdurate silence; a customs official who absconds with his young son to an airport hotel to flee from the news of his wife's affair; a professor whose heroic grasp of the ridiculous cloaks his vulnerability, and a literary agent whose reputation for frankness belies her personal need. Presenting love, friendship, loneliness and victorious stamina with her distinctive lucidity and comic sense, Penelope Gilliatt commemorates the singularity of the human character. Told just enough, we feel we have been told everything.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Virago Press Ltd
Published: 18 May 1989

ISBN 10: 1853810169
ISBN 13: 9781853810169

Media Reviews
Some years ago, I read a collection of short stories by Penelope Gilliatt which was so original, so striking that I have never forgotten it. The collection was called What's It Like Out? and if you are a short-story fan, or thinking of becoming one... grab it -- Susan Hill
Author Bio
Born in 1932, Penelope Gilliatt was an English novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and film critic. She is perhaps best known for writing the screenplay for Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971) and she wrote several novels, including One by One (1965) and A State of Change (1967). As a film critic, Gilliatt wrote numerous reviews for The Observer before she began a column that ran for years in The New Yorker, in which she alternated for six month intervals with Pauline Kael as chief film reviewer. She was married to playwright John Osborne from 1963-1968, giving him his only natural child a daughter, Nolan. She died on 9 May 1993.