Guy Ware's stories have appeared online, in magazines and in numerous anthologies. His collection, You Have 24 Hours to Love Us (2012), was longlisted for both the Frank O'Connor International Award and the Edge Hill Short Story prizes. Hostage was subsequently included in the Best British Short Stories 2013. The Fat of Fed Beasts is the first novel he hasn't put in a drawer and left there.
4/5 Rating. Alex, Rada, and D are ‘loss adjusters’ – they deal with
lives that have ended, reporting on the worth. Alex gets up later
than D and Rada. He wanted to be with Rada but she chose Gary. D is
sick of Rada’s detailing and just completely sick of Alex, and
hopes for better. Rada is in the bank when it’s robbed, can’t get
the old man to lay on the floor and her following suspension leaves
her aloof in the world. And then there are the demoted police who
want to give something unlawful a try.
*The Worm Hole*
Fleshing out the shadowy metaphysical hints of Beckett’s novels,
this intellectual romp is the best debut I have read in years.
*The Guardian*
But, this being a book set in 21st-century Britain, it is not only
concerned with the fate of the soul and the nature of
narrative, but also with guns, the ennui of daily life, minutely
observed trivia and deep and dark matters; Quentin Tarantino
is in the mix, as well as eschatology, the branch of theology
concerned with the end of days. If you liked Tom
McCarthy’s Remainder, you’ll love this. Guy Ware is also very good
at black humour (“I’ve either got to actually hit someone or find
some other way to calm myself down,” says the most violent and
yobbish of the narrators, “because if I go on like this, I’m
going to make myself ill”), and corny humour: on being told that
the first stage of grief, in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s formula, is
denial, a character replies “No, it’s not,” which got a
laugh from me at least. The result of all this is the
best debut novel I have read in years. I am now going to polish my
shoes.
*The Guardian*
The staff of the office are revealed as gatekeepers to the
afterlife, setting up a neat reversal in which determining the
resting place of recently departed souls is treated like any normal
job – employees rock up late and use work computers for their own
projects – while mundane tasks, such as making couscous salad, are
addressed with scholastic intensity.
*The Literary Review*
About halfway through the book, Ware sheds light on the mysterious
title. The fed beasts are from the Book of Isiah, one of those
bloodthirsty sections about offerings and livestock slaughter and
so on. But Ware’s disdain for the corporate world’s overfed beasts
is apparent but rendered with enough empathy and humour that it
does not overbear this delightful book.
*SHOTS Crime & Thriller Ezine*
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