Fit
From the author of The Mulberry Empire comes a short, delicious, rather disorienting novel about an indexer who wakes up one morning to find out that he has just been left by his wife…
‘My wife had gone and I didn’t know where she had gone. It would have been terrible if I had liked her but I only loved her.’
John is an indexer, and a bloody good one at that. He lives in a beautiful house with a beautiful garden, and has a beautiful wife, Janet. (Yes, yes, they are called Janet and John. They know.)
But lately, things have begun to go wrong. Thanks to his flawless index for Haddock: The Story of the Fish Which Changed the World, John has become typecast, and a commission for an index for Squid Through the Ages in Poetry and Prose swiftly followed. And to cap it all, he’s woken up with a terrible case of the hiccups, and Janet has left him…
Wonderfully funny and light, but ultimately very moving, The Fit is English comic writing at its best, from one of the most talented novelists at work today.
Philip Hensher’s novels include Kitchen Venom, which won the Somerset Maugham Award, Other Lulus and The Mulberry Empire, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the WH Smith ‘People’s Choice’ Award and highlighted by no fewer than twelve reviewers as their ‘book of the year’. Chosen by Granta to appear on their prestigious, once-a-decade list of the twenty best young British novelists, Philip Hensher is also a columnist for the Independent and chief book reviewer for the Spectator. He lives in south London.