Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys is a new collection of cork-screwed tales from the author of Great Apes. The Guardian (London) describes Will Self as “a wayward genius,” and you can find out why when you observe the author’s pitiless dissection of the foibles of men, women, and the Volvo 760 Turbo.
Self’s world is a no-funhouse of warped mirrors. A man is seduced into a misanthropically charged symbiosis with the insects infesting his cottage—he has entered “Flytopia.” In “A Story for Europe,” a two-year-old English child utters his first, halting words . . . in business German. In “Caring, Sharing,” status-conscious New Yorkers navigate the perils of dating along with their very literal “inner children.” In “The Rock of Crack as Big as the Ritz,” a black Londoner discovers an enormous rock of crack cocaine underpinning his house—and quickly turns it into an efficient little empire. In the title story a psychoanalyst strips away all the sangfroid of his professionalism to find beneath . . . precisely nothing. And in the short novella “The Nonce Prize,” a man framed for a sex crime he didn’t commit finds that his only way out is to win a short-story competition. Sharp, funny, and packed with verbal fireworks, Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys confirms yet again Will Self’s stature as one of the most accomplished and original writers of his generation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although the title piece in this collection of eight stories by the ever-inventive Self (Great Apes, etc.) is uncharacteristically realistic, in many others Self's signature surreality, inventive wordplay and altered states of consciousness conspire to give contemporary English satire a good Swiftian kick. Often Self's imaginative extravagances, with their obvious, satisfying hooks, serve as odd contrasts to the brash, merciless critiques of drug addiction that frame the collection. The opening story, entitled "The Rock of Crack as Big as the Ritz," introduces readers to a pair of London brothers who discover that the foundation of their house is made of crack cocaine and who embark on an infinitely profitable drug-dealing enterprise. Danny, who won't smoke the stuff, puts his addicted younger brother, Tembe, to work for him. The arrogant rise and desperate fall of each brother is fluidly documented as their story continues in "The Nonce Prize," where Danny is framed for a vicious crime of pedophilia. A gritty snapshot of the British prison system unexpectedly gives way to a twisted satire on creative writing courses and literary prizes. Other stories feature terra firma settings with winningly uncanny characters, such as an English toddler who speaks only Gessh ft Deutsch in "A Story for Europe"; the 12-foot-tall empathic na fs wealthy Manhattanites depend on for infantile human comfort in "Caring, Sharing"; or the human-insect housemates in "Flytopia." In the tense title story, about a psychiatrist in mid-burnout driving manically across Great Britain, Self cleverly meshes this character's misanthropic alienation with the skank of a doppelg nger hitchhiker. But of course Self's cleverness is already familiar to his readers; this collection demonstrates that his prowess with the distinctly nonfantastic can be as gripping as his most disturbing hallucinogenic visions.
