Bloater

A rediscovered literary classic, The Bloater is a rollicking hothouse novel where love and repulsion are two paths to the same abyssWhy do the only men I know carry wet umbrellas and say Umm? Im being starved alive. Quick: the first bookshop for a copy of the Kama-Sutra.Min works at the BBC as a sound engineer, and in theory shes married, but her husband George is so invisible that she accidentally turns the lights off even when hes still in the room. Luckily, she has her friends and lovers to distract her: in Mins self-lacerating, bracingly opinionated voice, life boils down to sex appealand of late shes being courted by an internationally renowned opera singer whom she refers to as The Bloater (a swelled, salted herring). Disgusted by and attracted to him in equal measure, her dilemmawhich reaches a hysterical, hilarious pitchis whether to sleep with him or not.Rosemary Tonksthe salt and pepper of the earthis a writer who gets her claws into the reader with all the joy of a cat and a mouse. Vain and materialistic, tender and savage, narrated in brilliant, sparkling prose, The Bloater is the perfect snapshot of London in the 1960s.