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Description
This collection of stories explores the late-20th-century world of downsizing, anxiety and sexual confusion. An office worker discovers his lover's betrayal via e-mail, and a woman hires a private detective and trawls through the underworld for her brother.
Summary
Series of nine short-stories published before Perlman really hit the big time with “Three Dollars” and then “Seven Types of Ambiguity”. Not badly written, but just not to my taste.
Memorable Quotes
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“Madeline, my wife, never used to wear a watch. She does now, I am told. For a long time, in a very inexact way, I had kept time for her. There was the time before we were married and the time after. There was the time before I was hospitalised and the time after. There was the time she needed me and the time after. And there is now.”
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“Why did I start with them? Why do any of us choose one company over another as an employer? The money? At the beginning they all offer more or less the same and no one know how it will go after that. I guess it is often not so much your prospects at a particular firm, because these are essentially unknowable, but whether people will think you have done well to get the job there, that determines you choice. That was largely it in my case. It was really the prestige. They gave good letterhead.”
First Sentence
Table of Contents
Authors & Contributors
- Elliot Perlman (Author)
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