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Grey Area (Self, Will)
Grey Area (Self, Will)

Paperback
Edition: 1st Atlantic Mon
Author: Will Self
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Release Date: 1997-02-06
ISBN-10: 0871136732
ISBN-13: 9780871136732
List Price: $14.00
Average Customer Rating:
Score = 4.5 Score = 4.5 Score = 4.5 Score = 4.5 Score = 4.5
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Summary:
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Grey Area demonstrates Will Self's razor-sharp wit in nine new stories that delve into the modern psyche with unsettling and darkly satiric results. "Inclusion®" tells the story of a doctor who is illegally testing a new antidepressant made from bee excrement. "A Short History of the English Novel" brings us face to face with a pompous publisher who is greeted at every turn by countless rejected authors. In "The End of the Relationship" a woman who has been left by her boyfriend provokes — "like some emotional Typhoid Mary" — that same reaction among all the couples she goes to for comfort. The narrator of "Between the Conceits" declares without hesitation that London is controlled by only eight individuals, and, thankfully, he is one of them.


Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: Score = 4.5 Score = 4.5 Score = 4.5 Score = 4.5 Score = 4.5

Some formidable satire
Customer Rating:  Score = 4 Score = 4 Score = 4 Score = 4 Score = 4
'Grey area', Will Self's second collection of short stories follow in the same tradition as his first - 'The Quantity Theory of Insanity'. Self seems to conjour up bizarre conceits, then writes them out. Overall the quality of the stories is strong, if a little mixed. Most of the stories are set around London and the M40 corridor to Oxford, the motorway acting as a surreal form of creative lodestone which exerts its influence over the stories within.

My favourites were 'Chest' a satire set in a futuristic Oxfordshire where ingrained class distinctions stubbornly prevail even though a thick, toxic fog blankets the landscape so country squires have to breathe through oxygen masks while they shoot pheasants; 'Scale' which riffs through all the myriad definitions of 'scale' in the dictionary through the eyes of a motorway worshipping morphine addict who dwells in Beaconsfield model village (hard to see how this one could translate into other languages) and 'The End of the Relationship', about a girl who is dumped by her boyfriend and subsequently finds that everyone she encounters that day is also suffering from a breakup.


Sleight of Hand
Customer Rating:  Score = 4 Score = 4 Score = 4 Score = 4 Score = 4
"Grey Area" is more impressive in scope and scabs than in realization. The linguistic sciolism (vituperative of me to say), the skittery plotlines, the curvy roads, the meaty chunks, flesh against my teeth, yes yes, miasma well-placed, and fluid-filled lungs remind me; "Inclusion" includes a tying of loose ends, and "The End of the Relationship" so entirely different - its (seeming) placidity rents it from the guttural slavering and pedestrian contempts of the rest. The cruelty here is even more pronounced due to its nuance and understated enunciation. There are throughout brilliant moments, but the stories often left me feeling circumspect - as though i had witnessed and was almost taken in by some elaborate legerdemain. There is an air of flippancy that detracts from the disturbing characterizations and dim, dystopian landscapes. The chthonic sturm und drang unravels a heavy damp sweater only to leave us with a string between forefinger and thumb. And still, worth the read: for the intestinal aspirations, for the restive mind at work.

praise for Will Self's Grey Area
Customer Rating:  Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5 Score = 5
Self is one of the most talented British contemporary writers and enjoys this celebrity for good reason. He writes Grey Area in an overwhelmingly cryptic tone saturated with insight in both human nature and the nature of our own surroundings in a surreal world. His observations are scientific anthropological jewels, while his writing mechanics are those of an artist. Grey Area is a book I'd recommend to not only the fan of British literature, short story format, or imaginative writing, but to the most hard - nosed non - reader

























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