BLOB
A Love Story
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
'Witty and wild'
Harper's Bazaar
'A strange but uniquely beautiful concept of a love story that delves into care, compassion and what it is to be human'
Stylist
'This is a sharp, funny and poignant look at what it means to connect with another being, and yourself'
Weike Wang, New York Times
A hilarious and moving debut novel about a young woman who decides to turn a sentient blob into her perfect man...
Vi Liu's life is a mess. Having dropped out of college, she's stuck in a job she hates at a local hotel. Her ex-boyfriend has blocked her and she's lashing out at her family and co-workers.
One night, drunk outside a drag club, she stumbles across a mysterious sentient blob. She takes it home, where she feeds it a diet of sugary cereal and reality TV. Slowly, she realises that she can shape the blob into her perfect man: someone attentive, outgoing and with more than a passing resemblance to Ryan Gosling.
But is Bob the blob really the answer to all her problems, or a catalyst for further disaster? Sharp, strange and very funny, BLOB is a delightful story about growing up, fucking up and learning how to be a real person.
'Maggie Su's debut novel is nothing if not surprising.'
The Times *Book of the Month*
'A modern-day Mrs. Caliban, BLOB is a book that looks at identity and desire in profoundly interesting ways'
Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here
'Just brilliant -- utterly original, charming and funny, weirdly real and really weird. I can't stop thinking about this book and I'm telling everyone I know to read it'
Kate Davies, author of In at the Deep End
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Su's marvelous debut, a Taiwanese American woman sculpts a seemingly perfect partner out of a sentient blob. Two years after failing out of college, Vi works as a hotel receptionist and wallows over a breakup. She often copes with her emotional insecurity by drinking heavily, and during a night out at a drag show, she finds a blob in an alley and takes it home. She names the blob Bob and orders him to do chores around the house. She also feeds Bob a diet of sugary breakfast cereals. Eventually, Bob grows into a human, one who resembles a handsome white movie star, Vi's ideal type. He accompanies her to a family dinner and agrees to let her parents think they're dating, though he chafes against Vi's homebody habits and starts showing up at her job. Meanwhile, Vi navigates lingering tensions with her family—her parents sold her childhood home without telling her, and her brother, a pediatric resident, is unwilling to console her. Su's clever conceit provides a catalyst for Vi's revelatory introspection, as she faces her self-destructive tendencies and the difficulties of being human. The result is a top-notch tale of arrested development.
