Kate Solomon

I’m really irritatingly fussy about books. I have a really specific taste which I’ve never managed to verbalise properly, and can’t help but imagine all kinds of pretentions and arrogances in most novels which probably aren’t even there.

There are just two authors whose books I’ve enjoyed sufficiently to feverishly scan the shelves just in case they have a new novel out whenever I’m in a book shop. One is Glen David Gold, whose first novel Carter Beats The Devil was everything I’d never realised I wanted in a book. The other is Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came To The End which was so perfectly pitched, so brilliantly written, so wonderfully amusing and so desperately appropriate that it instantly became my favourite novel.

So I’m falling over myself with excitement and counting down the days until February 25th, the day that his follow-up, The Unnamed, is out in paperback. I can’t imagine anything harder than penning a follow-up to a successful debut (well, apart from writing a successful debut) but I have faith.

Here’s the synopsis from Penguin’s website:

Tim Farnsworth is a handsome, healthy man, ageing with the grace of a matinée idol. He loves his work. He loves his family. He loves his kitchen. And then one day he stands up and walks out on all of it. He cannot stop walking. And, as his body propels him relentlessly forward, deep into the unfamiliar outer reaches of the city, he begins to realise he is moving further and further from his old self, seemingly unable to turn back and retrieve what he has lost.

In his extraordinary novel Joshua Ferris delineates with great tenderness and a rare and inimitable wit the devastating story of a life taken for granted and what happens when that life is torn away without explanation or warning. The Unnamed is no less than a shimmering reflection of our times, of the lives we aspire to and the terrifying realisation of what is beyond our control.

Can’t. Wait.