Name: Quicksand
Rating: 3.5 (4 reviews)
ISBN: 9781926428680

Steve Toltz

Quicksand

Rebecca Harwood

My original intention was to take revenge, make amends, confront ghosts and settle scores. But i couldn't be bothered with all that so i focused on one thing, apologies.

Intensely moving, darkly funny and hugely entertaining, Quicksand focuses on the multifaceted dynamics between the protagonists Aldo and Liam: lifelong friends, criminal and police officer, muse and writer. As well as being a compulsively funny work, Quicksand also offers its reader a profound exploration of fate, suffering and resilience; a gruelling yet illuminating depiction of physical disability; and a subversive portrait of twenty-first-century society in all its hypocrisy and absurdity.

Emma

A daring, brilliant new novel from Man Booker Prize finalist Steve Toltz, for fans of Dave Eggers, Martin Amis, and David Foster Wallace: a fearlessly funny, outrageously inventive dark comedy about two lifelong friends. Liam is a struggling writer and a failing cop. Aldo, his best friend and muse, is a haplessly criminal entrepreneur with an uncanny knack for disaster. As Aldo’s luck worsens, Liam is inspired to base his next book on his best friend’s exponential misfortunes and hopeless quest to win back his one great love: his ex-wife, Stella. What begins as an attempt to make sense of Aldo’s mishaps spirals into a profound story of faith and friendship. With the same originality and buoyancy that catapulted his first novel, A Fraction of the Whole, onto prize lists around the world—including shortlists for the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award—Steve Toltz has created a rousing, hysterically funny but unapologetically dark satire about fate, faith, friendship, and the artist’s obligation to his muse. Sharp, witty, kinetic, and utterly engrossing, Quicksand is a subversive portrait of twenty-first-century society in all its hypocrisy and absurdity.

Rowena Wiseman

Toby Fehily

'A tour de force of sustained brilliance' Mail on Sunday Wildly funny and unceasingly surprising, Quicksand is both a satirical masterpiece and an unforgettable story of fate, family and friendship. Aldo Benjamin may be the unluckiest soul in human history, but that isn't going to stop his friend Liam writing about him. For what more could an aspiring novelist want from his muse than a thousand get-rich-quick schemes, a life-long love affair, an eloquently named brothel, the most sexually confusing evening imaginable and a brief conversation with God? 'What a joy to surrender oneself to a writer of such prodigious talent.' Peter Carey 'Tremendous' Sunday Times

Quicksand

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