HISTORY HAPPENED WHILE YOU WERE HUNGOVER.
When you haven’t had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.
If you’re living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn’t.
But that’s no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can’t, just once in a while, get himself laid.
From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes a historical novel that doesn’t know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can’t remember what ‘isotope’ means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.
LET’S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT
When you haven’t had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.
If you’re living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn’t.
But that’s no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can’t, just once in a while, get himself laid.
From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes a historical novel that doesn’t know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can’t remember what ‘isotope’ means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.
LET’S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT
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Reviews
Lovable, brilliant and entertaining . . . Beauman takes a huge range of styles and genres and pushes them and bends them often to glorious effect . . . Beauman has a huge talent for metaphor and simile and hits with almost all of them. My personal favourite was 'there was enough ice in her voice for a serviceable daiquiri' - very Raymond Chandler. Also brilliant are some of his characters - notably Colonel Gorge who suffers from 'ontological agnosia' brought on by sniffing too much of the car polish that has made him rich, which means that he cannot differentiate between pictures and reality. That this references back to the Brechtian approach to theatre is just one example of the cleverness of Beauman's approach. But mostly, Gorge is just hilarious . . . Beauman is one of the most innovative young writers around and is one to follow.
It is brilliantly witty, with a pace edging on breathless. Every stage is like the denouement of a great crime novel refigured as science. The reader is constantly challenged (and rewarded) as occurrences alternate between being clear and nebulous. Genuinely exhilarating.
At times THE TELEPORTATION ACCIDENT is as bloody-mindedly difficult as Egon Loeser, but it builds slowly, brings its threads together with great skill, and Ned Beauman turns a good phrase as his characters dance their line between the cleverly obnoxious and the obnoxiously clever.
Praise for Boxer, Beetle
a piece of staggeringly energetic intellectual slapstick . . . it's crammed with strange, funny and interesting things
an enjoyable confection; witty, ludicrous and entertaining
An astonishing debut...buzzing with energy, fizzing with ideas, intoxicating in its language, Boxer, Beetle is sexy, intelligent and deliriously funny
A rambunctious, deftly-plotted delight of a debut
Ned Beauman's astonishingly assured debut starts as it means to go on: confident, droll, and not in the best of taste . . . Many first novels are judged promising. Boxer, Beetle arrives fully formed: original, exhilarating and hugely enjoyable.
Frighteningly assured
Exuberant . . . There are politics, black comedy, experimentation and wild originality - and I haven't even got to the beetles. Terrific.
Debut bout is a real knockout . . . dazzling
Its ambitions are enormous, in terms of the range, energy and quality of the writing
Dazzling . . . As in PG Wodehouse and the early Martin Amis the tone is mischievous and impudent without being merely jaunty or wacky . . . in Erksine and Broom we have two endlessly curious heroes whose thoughts are fascinating even at their silliest.
A witty, erudite debut . . . thick with trivia, it confidently takes on British fascism, the Thule society, anti-Semitism, atonal composition, sex, and the class system . . . An articulate and original romp . . . often gobsmackingly smutty. Beauman is one to watch.
Not one for the easily shocked, young scribe Ned Beauman subjects the reader to a parade of ghoulish events and ghastly theories throughout his dazzling first novel Boxer, Beetle . . . deeply researched and punchily written, this is an utterly unique work that marks the London-based author out as an exciting new voice in fiction.
Beauman skips with panache between his dreadful version of the present and the macabre absurdities of a period when cock-eyed science and rabid anti-Semitism provided a toxic cocktail for the upper classes. His killer irony evokes early Evelyn Waugh, and his lateral take on reality Will Self at his unsettling best. This is humour that goes beyond black, careening off into regions of darkness to deliver the funniest new book I've read in a year or two.
Clever, inventive, intelligently structured, genre-spanning, as magpie-like in its references as any graphic novel, and above all, an enjoyable, high-octane read through a fascinating period in history.
The 1930s are wonderfully evoked, and the historical sections of the novel are taut, thematically rich and extremely well written . . . it takes real skill to make a tragic hero out of the five-foot, nine-toed alcoholic Seth Roach . . . it's clear from this compelling debut that Beauman can perform the complicated paradoxical trick required of the best 21st-century realist novelists: to take an old and predictable structure and allow it to produce new and unpredictable connections.
An edifying treatise on the absurdity of eugenics and racial theories, and probably the most politically incorrect novel of the decade - as well as the funniest . . . Monstrous misfits with ugly motives are beautifully rendered in a novel where Beauman's scrupulous research is deftly threaded through serious themes in a laugh-out-loud-on-the-train history lesson.
I can only gape in admiration at a new writing force and wonder what he's going to produce next.
The scenes set in the past are reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall in their grotesque stupidity and amorality, and the present-day characters are as ruthless as any in modern noir fiction. It also makes a persuasive argument for the moral repercussions of Darwinism and the absurdities of fascism and repressed homosexuality, but that's just three aspects of a witty, fascinating and romping read.
Beauman writes with wit and verve.
A shape-shifting, time-travelling, genre-teasing treat.
Less than two years after his multi-award-winning debut 'Boxer, Beetle' Ned Beauman returns with another fizzing firework of a caper, featuring as many cracking escapades as its predecessor . . . His prose is wonderfully discursive and buzzes with originality, while scenes of pure farce nod respectfully to Thomas Pynchon and Hunter S Thompson . . . his bold characterisations, slapstick humour, slick similes and tangential subplots are sublime. A strong, smart follow-up that proves Beauman is more than comfortable with the hype he's created for himself.
Terrific . . . if there was ever any worry that he might have crammed all his ideas into his first book, this makes it clear he kept a secret bunker of his best ones aside.
'If you care about contemporary writing, you must read this . . . BOXER, BEETLE was acclaimed as the most inventive fictional debut in years, buzzing with energy and ideas, and Beauman's second novel keeps up the pace'
Funny and startlingly inventive . . . Beauman is a writer of prodigious talent, and there are enough ideas and allusions and comic set pieces in this work, longlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, to fill myriad lesser novels.
A glorious, over-the-top production, crackling with inventive wit and seething with pitchy humour . . . A beguiling success . . . Ingenious . . . There is such an easy felicity in Beauman's writing and such a clever, engaging wit . . . that one feels he could write something as much fun every two years. The prospect of which makes me very, very happy indeed.
An extraordinary, Pynchonesque flea-circus of a book...Ned Beauman's pyrotechnical comic novel, his second, is as violently clever as you'd expect from his earlier book, BOXER, BEETLE... [a] frantically entertaining pasteboard extravaganza
This is an unquestionably brilliant novel, ribald and wise in equal measure . . . a witty and sometimes deeply moving fictional exegesis of the Modernist twilight.
I'm sure it's the funniest novel on the list.
He's done it again . . . Beauman does adolescent male lust and anomie with the verve of a young Amis and this is a great romp of a novel, delightful in its inventiveness.
A hoot - very clever and charming, with an awesone range of reference.
Funny, scandalous, decadent and erudite, THE TELEPORTATION ACCIDENT is a hugely enjoyable madness with flavours of Pynchon, Huysmans and Jerome K. Jerome.
Beauman, whose first novel BOXER, BEETLE was widely acclaimed, sets out his stall as a latter-day Evelyn Waugh in this dazzling satire that begins in 1930s Berlin. Biting black comedy.
[Beauman] is blisteringly funny, witty and erudite . . . Beauman manages to combine the intrigue of a thriller with the imagery of a comedy. It makes for an excellent read.
Ned Beauman is a very funny writer, but also a very serious one. His second novel is a glorious rigmarole of satire, insanity, genre tropes and aching romantic pain, but never doubt that it is an essentially serious book.
Its meticulously crafted plot skitters from sci-fi to noir thriller; with comedic interludes and some romance for added sizzle . . . you'll be left bedazzled.
Beauman has a huge gift for satire and the wry phrase...brought together so immaculately you never notice how hard he's working.
A novel that turns everything on its head, Beauman's book is critical, funny and deliciously deviant.
Ned Beauman is a writer of unceasing invention and his second novel is replete with ideas.
Popping with ideas, fizzing with vitality and great fun to quaff.
Ned Beauman has written another very pleasing comic romp through the 1930s, offering a second offbeat perspective on the rise of the Third Reich. It is, once more, full of good jokes, erudite winks and historical whimsy . . . Beauman excels at both the grand, jostling structure and the individual sentence. His similes are often inspired, his dialogue is frequently hilarious, and his ability to keep all the plates spinning, as the story dashes between years and continents, is very impressive.