Nathan Newman

“These pages are brilliant, every second seems completely real. The prose is alive and interesting and very amusing. Everything in thesechapters has the absolute ring of truth.” -- Zadie Smith It's Natwest's last day before he leaves for university, and there's only one thing on his mind: the deeply embarrassing package he ordered to his house - which still hasn't arrived. He won't leave town without it. Any alternative is too distressing to consider ... This is the story of twenty-four hours in the life of Natwest, and his small-town odyssey in pursuit of the missing package. And yet it's also the story of a middle-aged dentist who dreams of being a respected artist - but the only thing he can seem to paint is the human mouth. And it's the story of a tortured imam involved in a quasi-romantic entanglement with the local vicar; and an octogenerian mourning the death of her secretive husband; and a troubled teenager whose nudes have leaked on the internet. It's the story of Natwest's obnoxious ex-boyfriend, and his class-traitor mother and her childhood boyfriend, and the life-changing secrets he knows about Natwest's past. Alternating between Natwest's idiosyncratic inner world and the perspectives of the other characters - and dazzling in its energy, imagination and originality - this is an outrageously funny and tenderly moving story about being connected to everyone and everything at all times; about love, friendship, and the lies we tell ourselves; about unhappy endings, happy endings - and whether anything really is as simple as one or the other.

A Novel

How to Leave the House

Annabelle Gauthier

Turns out his love for the world was boundless. He cared for every individual who existed, with and without him. His only wish was that he could leave this useless body and become one of them, even for a minute. Become an old woman. An Imam. A dentist. His own mother. Wouldn't that be something?

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