Böcker av Nicola Barker

Nicola Barker weaves humor and tragedy through this collection, as her characters struggle to find love, independence, and fulfillmentThe Three Button Trick and Other Stories is a collection of nineteen of Nicola Barker's most brilliant stories and exemplifies her ability to create daring, witty, and dynamic characters, all their idiosyncrasies intact. Barker's stories often use wordplay and humor to stretch the boundaries of metaphor and reality as outrageously original plots unfold. The collection begins with the tale of a teenage girl whose obsession with the size of her nose dangerously compromises her relationships with her friends and her family. ?G-String? and ?Symbiosis: Class Cestoda? detail women who gain self-esteem, albeit through quirky methods, despite the cowardly men who try to suppress them. The title story, ?The Three Button Trick,? traces the story of a man who deliberately buttons his duffel coat incorrectly to attract sympathetic females. Barker skillfully intertwines humor with despair; she taps into the psyches of her characters to create an authentic and singular narrative. The Three Button Trick and Other Stories is a resonant, audacious volume from a writer of immense talent and originality.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Darkmans is an exhilarating, extraordinary examination of the ways in which history can play jokes on us all... If History is just a sick joke which keeps on repeating itself, then who exactly might be telling it, and why? Could it be John Scogin, Edward IV's infamous court jester, whose favorite pastime was to burn people alive - for a laugh? Or could it be Andrew Boarde, Henry VIII's physician, who kindly wrote John Scogin's biography? Or could it be a tiny Kurd called Gaffar whose days are blighted by an unspeakable terror of - uh - salad? Or a beautiful, bulimic harpy with ridiculously weak bones? Or a man who guards Beckley Woods with a Samurai sword and a pregnant terrier?Darkmans is a very modern book, set in Ashford [a ridiculously modern town], about two very old-fashioned subjects: love and jealousy. It's also a book about invasion, obsession, displacement and possession, about comedy, art, prescription drugs and chiropody. And the main character? The past, which creeps up on the present and whispers something quite dark - quite unspeakable - into its ear.The third of Nicola Barker's narratives of the Thames Gateway, Darkmans is an epic novel of startling originality.

To the world he is Sri Ramakrishna - godly avatar, esteemed spiritual master, beloved guru. To Rani Rashmoni, he is the Brahmin fated to defy tradition. But to Hriday, his nephew and long-time caretaker, he is just Uncle. Rather than puzzling the shards of history and legend together, the author shatters the mirror again and rearranges the pieces.

Imagine a perfect world where everything is known, where everything is open, where there can be no doubt, no hatred, no poverty, no greed. Imagine a System which both nurtures and protects. A Community which nourishes and sustains. An infinite world. A world without sickness, without death. A world without God. Could you be happy there?

'Open yourself up again to all that terrible light and savage bliss and deafening reverberation ...'In the Summer of 1971, a charismatic family seeks refuge in the quiet, English coastal backwater of Pett Level. Bran Cleary is a controversial Irish muralist; his fractious and promiscuous wife (and muse) 'Lonely' Allaway is half Aboriginal; their strange, sickly daughter, Orla Nor, is almost a Saint.Thirteen years later, a shifty individual turns up in Pett Level, apparently determined to get to the bottom of the bizarre and ultimately tragic events which unfolded in the aftermath of that arrival. But does he really want to understand, or is he just way too close to the story to make any clear sense of it? And what of the locals who seem so determined to resist and undermine his investigations?'In The Approaches' is a fabulously twisted comedy of very bad manners which starts out as a seaside idyll and ends up as a pilgrimage - sometimes sacred, sometimes profane, and frequently both at once. Set in a 1984 which seems almost as distantly located in the past as Orwell's was in the future, Nicola Barker's tenth novel offers a captivating glimpse of something more shocking than any dystopia - the possibility of faith.

The hilarious Man Booker-longlisted novel from the author of 'Darkmans' and 'The Burley Cross Postbox Theft'.2006 is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Tiger Woods' reputation is entirely untarnished and the English Defence League does not exist. But storm-clouds are gathering above the bar of Luton's less-than-exclusive Thistle Hotel. Among those caught up in the unfolding drama are a man who's survived cancer seven times, a woman priest with an unruly fringe, the troubled family of a notorious local fascist, an interfering barmaid with three E's at A-level but a PhD in bullshit, a free-thinking Muslim sex therapist and his considerably more pious wife. But at the heart of every intrigue and the bottom of every mystery is the repugnantly charismatic Stuart Ransom - a golfer in free-fall.

The first novel from the brilliantly unconventional Nicola Barker is a tale of gambling, allergies, music and dogs, set in some of London's less scenic locations.Chance meetings between its cast of eccentric individuals - Ruby the bookie's cashier, violently disturbed (and disturbing) Vincent, Samantha the would-be cabaret singer, wilfully sickly Sylvia and Little Buttercup the never-quite-made-it greyhound - result in the unlikeliest of couples; and there's always the risk that it could all work out disastrously as characters select each other and try or don't try to make winning combinations. But, as Ruby, the story's soft-centred heroine, observes: 'Losing, that's the whole point of the gamble.'

Hilarious, poignant and frequently surreal, Small Holdings is a is a comedy of errors from a neglected corner of everyday life by the brilliantly unconventional Nicola Barker.An attractive park in Palmers Green plays host to Phil, a chronically shy gardener who feels truly at home only with his plants. He and his gentle colleague Ray, a man with all the sense of a Savoy cabbage, are tortured by Doug, their imposing and unpredictable supervisor, and a malevolent one-legged ex-museum curator called Saleem. In love with the truck-obsessed Nancy, Phil strives nobly to maintain his equilibrium despite being systematically mystified, brutalised, drugged, derided and seduced. But when he loses his eyebrows, he decides to fight back.

From the brilliantly unconventional Nicola Barker, the short stories in 'Love Your Enemies' present a loving depiction of the beautiful, the grotesque and the utterly bizarre in the lives of overlooked suburban Britons.Layla Carter, 16, from North London, is utterly overwhelmed by her plus-size nose. Rosemary, recently widowed and the ambivalent owner of a bipolar tomcat, meets a satyr in her kitchen and asks, 'Can I feel your fur?'In these ten enticingly strange short stories, a series of marginalised characters seek truth in the obsession and oppression of everyday existence, via a canine custody battle, sex in John Lewis and some strangely expressive desserts.

Winner of IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2000, Wide Open is the first of Nicola Barker's Thames Gateway novels.Poking out of the River Thames estuary, the strange Isle of Sheppey is home to a nudist beach, a nature reserve, a wild boar farm and not much else. The landscape is bleak, but the people are interesting. There's Luke, who specialises in join-the-dots pornography and lippy, outraged Lily. They are joined by Jim, the 8-year-old Nathan and the mysterious, dark-eyed Ronnie.Each one floats adrift in turbulent currents, fighting the rip tide of a past that swims with secrets. Only if they see through the lies and prejudice will they gain redemption. Wide Open is about coming to terms with the past, and the fantasies people construct in order to protect their fragile inner selves.

Heading Inland is a funny, broody, saucy collection of stories about the kind of people you sometimes meet but might prefer to ignore.Barker creates a wonderfully fantastical and unimaginable world: an unborn baby escapes an unsuitable mother through a secret belly-button zip; a wayward and yet enigmatic man attempts to rescue eels from an East End pie shop; a young woman discusses her fascination in other women's breasts; a boy with his inside organs back to front desperately seeks attention; and a bitter old woman becomes bent on war with a tramp.This collection confirms Nicola Barker as one of the most versatile and original writers of her generation with a brilliant unconventional imagination she creates a new world that sparkles with dark humour.

The breakthrough novel from one of the greatest comic writers in the language - one of the twenty selected by Granta as the Best of Young British Writers 2003.Some people follow the stars. Some people follow the soaps. Some people follow rare birds, or obscure bands, or the form, or the football.Wesley prefers not to follow. He thinks that to follow anything too assiduously is a sign of weakness. Wesley is a prankster, a maverick, a charismatic manipulator, an accidental murderer who longs to live his life anonymously. But he can't. It is his awful destiny to be hotly pursued - secretly stalked, obsessively hunted - by a disparate group of oddballs he calls The Behindlings. Their motivations? Love, boredom, hatred, revenge.