Lurid Cute: A Novel [Paperback]

The narrator of [Lurid & Cute] may be Thirlwells best creation yet.Andrew Ervin,The New York Times Book Review(Editors Choice)

Lurid & Cuteis a simple story of mayhem and ennui, almost a caper, but told with such satisfying ironies and verbal dexterity that everything is Technicolor again. So alive, so inventive, so very good.Joshua Ferris

Lurid & Cutetakes place in the suburbs of a giant city, where our narrator lives at home with his parents, together with his wife and dog. He has had a good education and, until recently, a good job. But then the lurid overtakes himand whether this transformation is caused by our heros present unemployment, or his feelings for a girl who is not his wife, or the return of his old friend Hiro, its hard to say. Whats definite is that it sets off a chain of events that feels, to those inside it, narcotic and neurotic, like one long and terrible descentcomplete with lies, deceit, and chicanery: one orgy, one brothel, and a series of firearms disputes.

Adam Thirlwellwas born in London in 1978. He is the author of the novelsPoliticsandThe Escape; the novellaKapow!;a project about international novels,The Delighted States, which won a Somerset Maugham Award; and of a compendium of translations edited forMcSweeney's. He has twice been selected as one ofGranta's Best Young Novelists. His work has been translated into thirty languages. He lives in London.

Whether hes writing about the decline and fall of our civilization or a guy who thinks hes accidentally killed his lover, Thirlwells prose bounces us into a fulfilled state of happiness and wonder.Gary Shteyngart,Salon

[A] devious tragicomedy. Sam Sacks,The Wall Street Journal

Marvelously entertaining . . . Thirlwell has written a book that is all malaise.Scott Esposito,San Francisco Chronicle

A novel that bafflel³3