READ, PIERS PAUL (1941)
The misogynist


Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, London. 2010. First edition. Third printing. Hardcover. Cardboarded band. With dustjacket. 257 pp. 14¼ x 22¼ x 2½ cm. 406 gr. Cover design David Mann. Cover photographs iStockphoto. Author photograph Eliza Beveridge. ISBN-13 978-1-4088-0565-7.


Jomier broods. He broods about the present. He broods about the past. He types his gloomy thoughts onto his computer screen - a digital journal. When he has nothing more to say about the present, he returns to the past, copying entries from old notebooks onto his computer.


Jomier has reached the age of retirement. His children have grown up. He lives alone in London, embittered and humiliated after his wife, Tilly, had an affair and left him for Max, an uninhibited international banker. Years later he still mourns the death of his marriage, often trying to pinpoint when, and why, it all went wrong. With little now left to fill his time other than formulaic middle-class dinner parties, Jomier seeks refuge in his journals, recalling those years when he had expectations and when he was still loved by his wife.


Then Jomier falls for Judith and life starts to improve as, cautiously, they start an affair. But old habits die hard and patterns repeat themselves. It is only when Jomier's daughter falls ill with a rare blood disorder that Jomier finally begins to reassess his feelings towards those he loves and his ability to forgive.


Darkly humorous, ruthlessly satirical and at times surprisingly moving, The Misogynist is a perceptive exploration of the ways in which we can unintentionally let past disappointments affect our present, and how difficult it can be to move forward.



'Piers Paul Read is one of Britain's most intelligent and disturbing writers' - New York Times Book Review


'Marvellously comic, superbly inventive ... one of the most arresting British novelists to have appeared in years' - The Times


'Undoubtedly one of the most talented novelists of his generation' - Francis King, Sunday Telegraph


'A storyteller of the first order, as refreshing as it is rare among the bedraggled ranks of contemporary novelists' - Joseph Pearce, author of The Quest for Shakespeare



As new.




BOOKNUMBER: 20979