Everybody's Right
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
‘I’m going back to what I was twenty years ago. I’m riding across a terrain of buried curiosity, the adrenaline is starting to flow again, and the old obsessions are coming back: I want to start doing cocaine every day, I want to run after every female who passes, I want to smell the smells of Italy again, I want my old life back. It’s a bit late for all that, I know, but who gives a fuck? I want to die stark naked, drowned in a well of Ballantine’s, surrounded by whores. All this I want, suddenly, I want it very much indeed. But I hide it well.’
This is the story of Tony Pagoda, a hero of our time, a man of incredible energies and appetites with a dark secret in his past and a unique perspective on the world.
1980s Italy is Tony’s oyster. A charismatic singer, he is talented and successful, up to his neck in money, drugs and women, enjoying an extravagant lifestyle in Naples and Capri. But when life gets complicated, Tony decides it’s time for a change. While on tour, he disappears to Brazil and an existence free from excess, where all he has to worry about are the herculean cockroaches. But after eighteen years of humid Amazonian exile, somebody is willing to sign a giant cheque to bring Tony back to Italy. How will he face the temptations of his old habits and the new century?
A huge bestseller in Italy, Everybody's Right is an extraordinary debut novel from the award-winning film director Paolo Sorrentino. It is a book about Italy and a book about the modern world; a book about Tony and a book about all of us. Through Tony’s irresistible voice Sorrentino illustrates his imaginative power and his incredible gifts for drama and satire.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Italian director Sorrentino's debut novel is all about Tony Pagoda world-renowned crooner, cokehead, and male chauvinist whose "favorite subject" is himself. In light of Tony's egotism, every other character falls quickly by the wayside, allowing for very little conflict in the story. The narrative arc consists primarily of Tony wandering around New York, Italy, and Brazil, committing various offenses against others, getting away with them (and, more often than not, getting rewarded for said transgressions), and still somehow conjuring the gall to pity himself. The vignettes that showcase Tony's moral ineptitude are decidedly entertaining, whereas his philosophical rants on youth, political economy, and, of course, love, are often oblique and long-winded. And when Tony (rarely) does engage in a genuine emotional interaction, Sorrentino breaks the first rule of Creative Writing 101: show, don't tell. Perhaps, given his roots in film, we can forgive him, but "I'm crying like a little baby boy" does not inspire empathy. To Sorrentino's credit, however, Tony is detestable, and making a character believable enough to hate is an accomplishment.
