Show Them a Good Time
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 30 days of Standard free
£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Show Them a Good Time
Narrated by:
Jill Crawford
Buy Now for £12.16
-
Narrated by:
-
Jill Crawford
-
By:
-
Nicole Flattery
A NEW STATESMAN, IRISH TIMES AND GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR
Winner of the Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year 2019
'A masterclass in the short story – bold, irreverent and agonisingly funny' SALLY ROONEY
‘Demands repeated reading' JON McGREGOR
'Announces the arrival of a brilliant talent' FINANCIAL TIMES
An urgent and unforgettable collection of stories, Show Them a Good Time explores types – men and women, their assigned roles and meanings – in modern society.
A young, broke Irish woman narrates her relationship with a successful comedian in New York; two hapless university students take to the stage in a bid to assert their autonomy; a school teacher makes her way through a series of dead-end dates, gamely searching for love or distraction as the world teeters towards ruin.
The characters in these magnificently accomplished stories are haunted as much by the future as they are by their pasts. Exuberant, irreverent and loaded with dark humour, Show Them a Good Time marks the arrival of a strikingly original new voice in fiction.©2019 Nicole Flattery (P)2019 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c
Critic reviews
I truly love and admire Nicole Flattery’s writing. Show Them a Good Time is a masterclass in the short story – bold, irreverent and agonisingly funny – and it does full justice to its author’s immense talent (Sally Rooney)
Exhilarating. Flattery’s judgments crackle with cruel, clear sight ... Flattery writes with empathy, freedom and virtuosic technique: this debut announces the arrival of a brilliant talent
If tradition is the kitchen sink, Flattery removes it from the wall, smashes it to pieces, and dances all over it with delight. With a literary voice that is as sophisticated and erudite as it is spiky and hilarious, Flattery has taken the short story format into an exciting, energetic, and multifaceted dimension
Startling, daring and dazzlingly dark (Colin Barrett)
Smart as a whip, unusual, and very very funny, Flattery's distinctive prose is a real treat (Claire-Louise Bennett)
Flattery tells the truth but tells it slant, so that from her sentences, to her symbolism, to her zany, often surrealist plots, her stories fizz with humour and surprise ... Flattery’s writing – as subversive as it is original – has more than charm; acknowledging the terror, it celebrates the joy of humour in a hollow, imploding world
Demands repeated reading. These stories are very funny, and very sad, usually at the same time. Which, as Flattery shows us brilliantly, is the best time (Jon McGregor)
[A] mix of deadpan drollery and candour … Extremely funny – peculiar as well as ha-ha – and highly addictive
Flattery is the latest wave of a recent dam burst of Irish talent, including Sally Rooney, Kevin Barry and Danielle McLaughlin. She has a true storyteller’s ability to make a few words do a lot. The stories in Show Them a Good Time explore difficult questions about self-worth, agency and intimacy with thrilling sharpness
Like Sally Rooney, Flattery is adept at capturing millennial culture, but her voice is more distinctive in its daring, eccentric intelligence. This is a collection which lives up to its hype
A bright new voice in Irish literature. Think early Lorrie Moore, or the stories that launched Anne Enright’s career. Flattery brings the reader through this world with ease, mixing the absurd with the workaday, trauma with humour
There’s laughter in the dark and darkness in the laughter in these fabulously astute stories that are at once surreal and more real than reality. Nicole Flattery is so good (Melissa Broder, author of 'The Pisces')
At its best, which is often, Flattery’s prose has a thrilling relentlessness and rhythmical snap to it; it pummels and excites
Brilliantly bleak
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.