Читать онлайн «Topics About Which I Know Nothing»

Автор Патрик Несс

‘Here are 10 short fictions, each of which works as a showcase for Ness’s highly quirky imagination … Each story is a tasty titbit, to be savoured briefly before moving on to the next one. What makes these stories so delightful is that there actually is something very substantial at work behind them, however airy they seem at first. They’ll lodge in the mind. ’ Guardian

‘Ness’s first collection brims with inventiveness and creative audacity. ’ Daily Telegraph

‘Ness’s take on the absurd and offbeat is sharp, intelligent and funny. ’ Time Out

‘Remarkable, an extraordinary, yet utterly convincing creation. ’ Scotsman

‘Sparkling humour … Ness has a wonderful imagination: creative, unpretentious and pleasingly bonkers. ’ Metro

‘Very, very funny … a unique comic manifesto from a very talented newcomer. ’ Daily Express

For Vicki Burrows, Belle of Puyallup

We’ve got so many tchotchkes,

We’ve practically emptied the Louvre.

In most of our palaces,

There’s hardly room to manoeuvre.

Well, I shan’t go to Bali today,

I must stay home and Hoovre

Up the gold dust.

That doesn’t mean we’re in love.

The Magnetic Fields

Contents

You always love the awkward child best, don’t you?

I get asked all the time (by teens in particular) what’s my favourite book of the ones I’ve written. I always answer that it’s the same as asking your parents if they have a favourite child: you know they have one, but they’re never going to admit it.

But Topics About Which I Know Nothing has a bit of a special place for me (not least that it taught me never to have a comedy title; funny the first time, but 500 times later…). Because these are all stories I wrote on the real expectation that no one would ever read them, and if that were true, then I could just have loads of fun amusing myself and seeing if I could get away with murder. With some of these, perhaps, it’s a close call.

‘Sally Rae Wentworth’ (even with its slightly imperfect grasp of geography) is still one of my secret favourite children. ‘The Gifted’, too – a rare instance of autobiographical writing (to an obvious point). ‘Quis Custodiet’ goes all the way back to my college writing classes with T. C. Boyle (if heavily revised), and ‘Sydney is a City of Jaywalkers’ is my first published piece of writing ever.