Deborah Friedell | Worse, a robot!

Worse, a robot!

'It's the kind of book Jane Austen would've written if she'd been male and hipper.'

'It's The Name of the Rose if Sean Connery's character was a conglomeration of self-aware spores instead of a medieval monk.'

'If Virginia Woolf had a younger sister with a passionate interest in icebergs – '

'This book is probably the first introduction to disciplined introspection in over 100 years.'

'A powerful depiction of humanity personified.'

'George has fallen in love with Lucy. A prostitute. Worse, a robot.'

'No leader of modern times was more unique and more uniquely national than Charles de Gaulle.'

'James Brabazon has written a fully-adrenalised book.'

'If Joan London never writes another word, The Good Parents is more than enough.'

21 July 2010 at 1:20pm

Martin says:

‘No leader of modern times was more unique and more uniquely national than Charles de Gaulle.’

You must have made that one up! Anyway, what about Bob Hawke?
- 21 July 2010 at 2:55pm
  
  Geoff Roberts says: @ Martin
  
  What about Bob Hawke indeed? My favourite ‘No leader of modern times was more unique and more uniquely national than Joseph Stalin."
21 July 2010 at 2:33pm

Chris Larkin says:

Amy Sackville did say in an interview that if she could go back in time she would go back to 1922. Virginia Woolf was certainly in the news that year but maybe the furore over icebergs had died down by then?
21 July 2010 at 2:54pm

Geoff Roberts says:

Make you want to read the books, don't they? All right, here's one for you to guess at: "Lucky Jim fifty years earlier."
21 July 2010 at 3:56pm

pinhut says:

Interesting efforts, but I raise you this jacket quote to a Penguin Books edition of Good Soldier, Svejk

"Perhaps the funniest novel ever written." —George Monbiot

The fact that these eight words did not draw worldwide condemnation and threats of reprisals is, frankly, beyond me.
21 July 2010 at 5:06pm

jaf says:

it's a seagoing fantasy yarn that is like 'Gulliver's Travels crossed with The Golden Compass and a dollop of Pride and Prejudice.
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/13/choir-boats-free-ya.html

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Worse, a robot!