Brideshead Abbreviated: The Digested Read of the Twentieth Century

John Crace

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Published by Cornerstone Publishing

Epub

Format: ebook

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Details

EAN: 9781409061748
Published: 14 Oct 2010

About the book

Synopsis

John Crace's 'Digested Read' column in the Guardian has rightly acquired a cult following. Each week fans avidly devour his latest razor-sharp literary assassination, while authors turn tremblingly to the appropriate page of the review section, fearful that it may be their turn to be mercilessly sent up.

Now he turns his critical eye on the classics of the last century, offering bite-sized pastiches of everything from Mrs Dalloway to Trainspotting via Lolita and The Great Gatsby. Those who have never quite got around to reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man will be delighted to find its essence distilled into a handful of paragraphs. Those who have never really enjoyed Lord of the Flies will be pleased to find it hilariously parodied in an easily swallowable 982 words. And those who find all such works a little highbrow will be relieved to discover, between the covers of this book, John Crace's take on the likes of Ian Fleming, P. G. Wodehouse and the Highway Code.

Witty and sharp, this is essential reading both for those who genuinely love literature and for those who merely want to appear ridiculously well read.

Press

What the critics say

A swift kick up the backside to some of modern literature's most iconic works. Accurate, merciless and very, very funny
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I've read all these books at least twice - and now I've read John Crace's digested versions I wonder why I bothered
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A genius and a madman. The meanest, funniest parodist alive
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For the last 10 years [Crace's] 'Digested Reads' have been reason enough to buy the Guardian. Taking a well-known novel, he gives a brief distillation of the plot while capturing - often perfectly - the tone of its author. At the same time, he jabs a sharpened elbow into their pomposities and limitations
- Spectator

Beautifully observed and poisonously cruel ... laugh-out-loud funny
- The Lady

With witty, accurate impressions of writers' styles, this is the best way to appear incredibly well read without getting bogged down in hundreds of pages of James Joyce or Ernest Hemingway
- Reader's Digest

A fun read ... Crace takes no prisoners as he chews up and spits out a century of literature. An amusing treat for the well-read and a fantastic cheat's guide for those who feel they probably should have read more
- Press Association

One hundred classics of modern literature are wickedly abridged by a smart satirist
- Saga