The Book of Idiots

‘Aristotle said, After coition, all animals are sad. Well I’m not.’ So tipsy, shambolic, sick Wil Daniel begins to tell our narrator, Dean, a tale that may be a ghost story or a romance, a farce or a tragedy. Can Clive regain the triumphs he achieved at the age of nine? Will Jeff stop his swimming trunks from dissolving? Meanwhile we get glimpses of Dean’s own half-lived life. These threads develop into a dark, off-beat, and merciless examination of maleness and mortality. This superbly written novel is a tour-de- force of revelation of character through dialogue, a meditation on human suffering which is no less acute for being routine and almost invisible to all but the sufferers, some of whom may not survive. Christopher Meredith is author of the award-winning Shifts and also publishes poetry and translations. The Book of Idiots is his fourth novel.