Mr. Phillips: Summary and book reviews of Mr. Phillips by John Lanchester, plus links to an excerpt from Mr. Phillips and a biography of John Lanchester.
Mr. Phillips
by John Lanchester
Hardcover: Apr 2000,
304 pages.
Paperback: Apr 2001,
304 pages.
Mr Phillips wakes on the morning of July 31 in his modest, nearly mortgage-free home, in the bed he has contentedly shared with his wife of thirty years (though to be honest, at night he lies beside her and dreams of other women), ready to face another ordinary day. Except that for Mr Phillips, it is not an ordinary day, for on Friday, July 28, he was summarily sacked. Nonetheless, he rises at his usual hour and prepares himself as he has done his entire working life for the office he no longer has.
This is the story of one day in the life of a decent man who only forty-eight hours before knew exactly who and what he was--husband and father, accountant, home-owner, son--and who on this day wonders who and what he can become.
With his eye for the telling detail, his ear for the commonplaces of speech that make us who we are, his sympathy for the very ordinariness that sets us each apart, John Lanchester has created a jewel of a novel: From common clay, he has given us gold.
He has been called "a writer whose gifts border on the demonic" (Michael Upchurch, Chicago Tribune), and his first novel, The Debt to Pleasure, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, winner of the Whitbred Best First Novel Award, a New York Times Notable Book, and a national bestseller.
Chicago Tribune - Michael Upchurch
A writer whose gifts border on the demonic.
New York Times - Richard Bernstein
Mr. Lanchester is a commanding writer.
USA Today
His writing has the clarity and zing of fine cut glass.
Chicago Tribune - Michael Upchurch
A writer whose gifts border on the demonic.
New York Times - Richard Bernstein
Mr. Lanchester is a commanding writer.
USA Today
His writing has the clarity and zing of fine cut glass.
London Review of Books - Adam Phillips
[E]xceptionally funny and often astoundingly intelligent.
Publishers Weekly
... this stylishly written novel makes it clear that Lanchester is more than a one-hit wonder.
Publishers Weekly
... this stylishly written novel makes it clear that Lanchester is more than a one-hit wonder.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by "Old fella" Fun but not always funny A wander through London the first day of your life after being made redundant is an opportunity to do whatever takes your fancy, or stirs your interest. Mr Phillips has some unexpected fun and his recollections and reflections are often droll, even... Read More
A moving, ambitious and richly conceived novel that summons up the heroics and follies of twentieth-century life.
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Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
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Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
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Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
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U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
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of 5
by "Old fella"
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