What Rhymes with Bastard?
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
The hilariously candid story of an unbelievably dysfunctional and disintegrating relationship.
When her beloved Jack got banged up in a mental hospital after trying to sail down the Thames in a makeshift raft, Linda didn’t take the hint. Instead, she married him and moved to San Francisco, where she planned to get ahead. Alas, her blue-skied visions hadn’t included unemployment, arguments, or Jack’s desire to sleep with as many women as he could get his hands on.
As romance turns to rot, our heroine pours her bile into song (but what does rhyme with ‘bastard’..?), assembles a cabaret band and takes to the dark, sticky stages of the city’s nightclubs. And there, amid a morass of strippers, magicians, artists and assorted weirdoes, she strives for the ultimate musical accolade: Ms Accordion San Francisco 2004.
This is, essentially, the story of how a very nice boyfriend became a plastered bastard and how Linda wrote some songs about it.
Reviews
‘Disgustingly, outrageously, intolerably funny. I am in love with Linda Robertson.’
Ian Sansom
'A hilarious and bittersweet comedy about a woman with the worst boyfriend on earth.’
Jenny Colgan
‘Likening Robertson's quirky and wonderfully funny memoir, What Rhymes with Bastard? to an edgy Bridget Jones certainly gives you a flavor of the book…and much, much funnier – than Helen Fielding's books…this memoir is a true delight.’ Sunday Times ‘Picks for 2008’
About the author
Shy, retiring Linda Robertson is technically Scottish, but spent twenty-three years honing her English accent before moving to the US. She likes to be prepared. After many years pootling on the violin, she started squeezing a small, golden accordion and hasn’t looked back since. She was 2004’s Accordion Queen of San Francisco. This is her first book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this darkly comedic debut memoir, Scottish ex-pat Robertson details a bad year in San Francisco, living with a no-good boyfriend and her own uncertain identity. Wryly observing that "even a boyfriend in a lunatic asylum seemed better than none," twenty-something Linda sends young, psychologically delicate Jack, "a good fixer-upper," ahead to SF to secure a job, a place to live, and a "perfect backdrop to our decaying love." The painful details of their relationship follow, as Jack becomes the alcoholic, drug abusing, philandering bastard of the title, and Robertson copes through friends, music and gallows humor. Though there's little on the ex-pat experience (or the whys of her and her friends' knack for poor choices), Robertson shares some welcome insights ("when your lover doesn't love you anymore, friends remind you that they do") and gamely pokes fun at their grim, collective situation. The most serious material follows the death of Robertson's mother, after which Robertson makes a bid for adulthood by entering the Ms. Accordion San Francisco 2004 pageant. Though sure to delight open-minded fans of chick lit (Robertson isn't bashful), it's a narrative unlikely to catch on with any broader an audience.
