Idiopathy
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2.7 • 3 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
‘The thought of going through it all again, all that love stuff . . .’
Katherine has given up trying to be happy. Thirty, reeling from her break-up with the ever-sensible Daniel, and stuck in a job and a town she hates, her mounting cynicism and vicious wit repel the people she wants to attract, and attract the people she knows she should repel. Daniel, meanwhile, isn’t sure that he loves his new girlfriend Angelica. But somehow not telling her he loves her has become synonymous with telling her that he doesn’t love her, meaning that he has to tell her he loves her just to maintain the status quo.
When their former friend Nathan returns from a stint in a psychiatric ward to find that his mother has transformed herself into bestselling author “Mother Courage”, with thousands of Twitter followers and a website, Katherine, Daniel and Nathan decide to meet to heal old wounds and reaffirm their friendship. But is revisiting the past a good idea? Almost certainly not.
Written with dazzling flair and deep insight; veering from scathing satire to a moving account of love and loneliness, Idiopathyneatly skewers the tangled relationships and unhinged narcissism of a self-obsessed generation. Taking aim at hippie protests, money-grabbing misery memoirs, self-help quackery and an increasingly bizarre cattle epidemic, it announces the arrival of a formidable, savagely funny talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Byers's debut novel starts promisingly but bogs down thanks to a particularly unpleasant main character, Katherine. She, Daniel, and Nathan are three friends in London whose lives are going through a rough patch. Once a couple, Katherine and Daniel have broken up, and Nathan has emerged from a long stint in rehab. As Daniel settles into a cushy new job and a relationship with the sanctimonious Angelina, Katherine distracts herself with a series of meaningless affairs, while Nathan moves back in with his parents, to learn that his mother has become a self-help guru. Initially, Katherine is bright, sassy, and fun, but after she gets pregnant, she seems to snap, reflexively saying cruel things and behaving obnoxiously to everyone she meets. The minimal storyline, in which Nathan persuades his old friends to get together for one last evening's carouse, hardly helps the book, while a subplot about a mysterious illness striking England's cattle adds little. Byers can write scenes with humor and sketches some memorable supporting characters Nathan's parents cry out for more space but the work never recovers from the decision to afflict the heroine with what reads like a severe personality disorder.
