Speaking With The Angel: Summary and book reviews of Speaking With The Angel by Nick Hornby, plus links to an excerpt from Speaking With The Angel and a biography of Nick Hornby.
Speaking With The Angel
by Nick Hornby
Paperback: Feb 2001,
256 pages.
Compiled by bestselling author Nick Hornby and featuring brand new stories from the hottest writers on both sides of the Atlantic, Speaking with the Angel is a fresh and funny collection that is sure to be the literary anthology of the year.
Here is a book that was inspired by a very special boy and a very special school. Some money from each copy of Speaking with the Angel sold will benefit autism education charities around the world, including The Treehouse School in London, where Nick’s son Danny is a student, and the New York Child Learning Institute here in the States. This project is truly a labor of love for Hornby and the other writers involved, many of whom are Nick’s friends.
These original first-person narratives come from the most exciting voices in fiction. Melissa Bank gives readers a glimpse into the mind of a modern New Yorker whose still-new relationship is a constant source of surprise in "The Wonder Spot." In Zadie Smith’s "I’m the Only One," a young man recalls his strained relationship with his diva-esque sister. Dave Egger’s "After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned," is told from the viewpoint of an unfortunate pit bull. Helen Fielding offers up a new twist on I’ve fallen and I can’t get up in "Luckybitch." And in Nick Hornby’s "NippleJesus," a bruiser finds out that guarding modern art is far more hazardous than controlling the velvet ropes at a nightclub. Speaking with the Angel also includes stories from Roddy Doyle, Irvine Welsh, Colin Firth, John O’Farrell, Robert Harris, Patrick Marber, and Giles Smith.
Twelve completely new stories, written by twelve undeniably imaginative voices. Speaking with the Angel is at turns clever, outrageous, witty, edgy, tender, and wicked. This is what they meant by original.
New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
Though the stories vary enormously in quality, they provide the reader unfamiliar with these writers with a tasting menu of their work, and longtime fans with some new morsels of fiction to debate. Dave Eggers's entry, After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned, which recounts the short, happy life of a pit bull, is a small tour de force that ratifies his ability to write about anything with style and vigor and genuine emotion.... Zadie Smith's contribution, I'm the Only One, similarly showcases her gift for creating funny, engaging characters...
Publishers Weekly
Starred review. A virtual who's who of the latest literary guard, this anthology bristles with the crackly talent and confidence of both the newly and already fabulous…the voices are consistent, fresh, particular…None of these twelve stories disappoints.
The Spectator (London)
An outstandingly good collection…Each story [is] permeated with deadpan wit, modernity, and a unique sense of awfulness.
It's a story about how to wreck your marriage, how to help the homeless, how not to raise your kids, how to find religion . . . and how to be good. 'Hornby's quick eye and nimble observational style nail everyone's vanity'.
"Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer."— Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead.
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New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
