Elaine
Will Self
Sep 2024 · RB Media · Narrated by Laurel Lefkow
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9 hr 17 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
The Booker-shortlisted author of Umbrella writes his most American novel yet—a brilliant portrait of a 1950s housewife, based on the life of the author’s mother, and an exploration of sexual freedom and sublimated desire
WILL SELF is one of the most inimitable contemporary writers in the English language, dubbed “the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation” by The Guardian. In this brilliantly conceived new novel Self turns his forensic eye and technicolor imagination to the troubled life of his mother, Elaine. Standing by the mailbox outside 1100 Hemlock Street in Ithaca, New York, Elaine thinks of her husband and child inside her house and wonders: is this ... it? As she begins to push back against the strictures of her life in 1950s America, she undertakes a disastrous affair that places her marriage to an Ivy League academic and former Communist Party member in peril. Based on the intimate diaries Self’s mother kept for over forty years, Elaine is a writer’s attempt to reach the almost unimaginable realm: a parent’s interior life prior to his own existence. Perhaps the first work of auto-oedipal fiction, Elaine shows Will Self working in an exciting new dimension, employing his stylistic talents to tremendous effect.
WILL SELF is one of the most inimitable contemporary writers in the English language, dubbed “the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation” by The Guardian. In this brilliantly conceived new novel Self turns his forensic eye and technicolor imagination to the troubled life of his mother, Elaine. Standing by the mailbox outside 1100 Hemlock Street in Ithaca, New York, Elaine thinks of her husband and child inside her house and wonders: is this ... it? As she begins to push back against the strictures of her life in 1950s America, she undertakes a disastrous affair that places her marriage to an Ivy League academic and former Communist Party member in peril. Based on the intimate diaries Self’s mother kept for over forty years, Elaine is a writer’s attempt to reach the almost unimaginable realm: a parent’s interior life prior to his own existence. Perhaps the first work of auto-oedipal fiction, Elaine shows Will Self working in an exciting new dimension, employing his stylistic talents to tremendous effect.
About the author
William Woodard "Will" Self was born on September 26, 1961. He is a British author, journalist and political commentator. He wrote ten novels, five collections of short fiction, three novellas and five collections of non-fiction writing. His novel Umbrella was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His subject matter often includes mental illness, illegal drugs and psychiatry. Self is a regular contributor to publications including Playboy, The Guardian, Harpers, The New York Times and the London Review of Books. He also writes a column for New Statesman, and over the years he has been a columnist for The Observer, The Times and the Evening Standard. His columns for Building Design on the built environment, and for the Independent Magazine on the psychology of place brought him to prominence as a thinker concerned with the politics of urbanism. Will Self will deliver the closing address at the 2015 Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) 2015.
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