Utterly Monkey
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
A very funny, energetic, wonderfully engaging novel about where we’re from and where we’d like to get to…
Danny Williams is talented, upwardly mobile and has left his Northern Irish small town roots well behind him. In his mid-twenties he lives in a stylish London flat and has a job in a top London law firm. However, one innocuous Wednesday night his old mucker from home, Geordie Wilson, arrives at the door. On the run from a loyalist militia, whose operational funds he has taken, he manages to bring everything that Danny has been fleeing from right to his smart London doorstep.
Taking place over an intense and gripping five-day period–set in both London and the fictional Irish town of Ballyglass–Nick Laird has written an hilarious, touching and ultimately redemptive novel about friendship.
Reviews
'”Utterly Monkey” is an extraordinarily accomplished novel, by a confident and eloquent voice, filled with humour and insights.' Sunday Times
'Fluently written, ebulliently implausible, Nick Laird's fiction debut is an entertaining mix of thriller and comedy of misfortunes.’ Independent on Sunday
'Funny, good-humoured and deftly written.' Daily Telegraph
'”Utterly Monkey” is the real thing; a novel rich in both achievement and promise, by a writer who can actually write.' The Times
'Exquisitely written and extremely entertaining.' Mail on Sunday
'A fine, amusing writer.' Daily Mail
'Laird has earned his place on the writers' catwalk. Expect to hear much more from this season's smash hit.' Belfast Telegraph
'Laird paces the story well, and shows his poetry roots with some arresting imagery.This is a debut with humour and a heart.' Marie Claire
'A sharp and funny debut.' Eve
About the author
Nick Laird was born in Northern Ireland in 1975, and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. He is the author of two collections of poetry and a second novel, ‘Glover’s Mistake’. He currently teaches creative writing at Columbia University in New York.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Laird poet, former lawyer and husband of Zadie Smith debuts, lad-lit style, with this sometimes entertaining story of childhood friends whose paths diverged radically and then reconverged. Danny Williams is a well-paid (if deeply unenthusiastic) lawyer at a prestigious London firm; Geordie Wilson, his boyhood chum from Northern Ireland, is "officially an unemployed labourer" who's just showed up on Danny's doorstep desperate for a place to stay. Geordie's in trouble with the Ulster Unionists back home, primarily because he has a sack full of their cash; Danny's been told he needs to go back to Northern Ireland to deal with a corporate takeover. Geordie joins forces with Danny, more out of idle curiosity than a sense of urgency (though the Unionists are planning something nasty). Laird's writing is clear and amusing, and both his protagonists are likable. But their aimlessness impedes the building of any narrative momentum, and the book's climactic scene is as rushed as it is contrived. The novel is well intentioned, clever and occasionally quirky but the whole feels like less than the sum of its parts.
