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    Idiopathy
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    Idiopathy
    Unavailable
    Idiopathy
    Audiobook9 hours

    Idiopathy

    Written by Sam Byers

    Narrated by Melody Grove

    3/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel award 2013, this bitterly humorous debut is a novel of love, narcissism, and ailing cattle.

    Katherine has given up trying to be happy. Her cynical wit repels the people she wants to attract, and attracts the people she knows she should repel. Her ex Daniel, meanwhile, isn’t sure that he loves his new girlfriend. But somehow not telling her he loves her has become synonymous with telling her that he doesn’t love her, meaning that he has to tell her he loves her just to maintain the status quo.

    When their former friend Nathan returns from a stint in a psychiatric ward to find that his mother has transformed herself into bestselling author and Twitter sensation ‘Mother Courage’ – Katherine, Daniel and Nathan decide to meet to heal old wounds. But will a reunion end well? Almost certainly not.

    Both scathing invective on a self-obsessed generation and moving account of love and loneliness, ‘Idiopathy’ skewers everything from militant environmentalists to self-help quackery and announces the arrival of a savagely funny talent.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateJun 6, 2013
    ISBN9780007525706
    Unavailable
    Idiopathy
    Author

    Sam Byers

    Sam Byers was born in 1979. Idiopathy is his first novel. It has been chosen for the Waterstones 11, the annual shortlist of the book chain’s favourite fiction debuts.

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    Reviews for Idiopathy

    3/5

    18 ratings1 review

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    • 2/5
      Grim book about a grim bunch of people, except the whole thing is supposed to be a comedy, and does have some funny moments. I read a review in the NYT, but methinks I didn't read it all the way through, since what I ended up with was not what I was expecting. I think I stopped reading so as not to ruin the story for myself. Idiopathy is funny, in parts. Unfortunately, it has entirely too much going on in terms of "funny bits"--as if a bunch of SNL skits were going all at once. Since the characters are icky, I got to the end and said, "Why, oh why, did I read this?" At least I was able to get through the whole thing pretty quickly. Finally, I'm sure Byers is trying to make a larger point with the whole cow thing as a parallel to the lives of his main characters, but it's a stretch. I wish at least one (of the characters) had been culled.