A laugh-out-loud love story with big ideas - and squirrels

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016

Can squirrels speak? Do snails scream?

Will a young couple, newly engaged, make it to their wedding day? Will their dysfunctional families ruin everything? Will they be undone by the advances of a very sexy, very unscrupulous heiress to a pharmaceuticals corporation?

Is getting married even a remotely reasonable idea in the twenty-first century?

And what in the world is a 'Veblen' anyway?

'Raw and weird and hilarious' Guardian

'A touching, wildly funny and peculiarly elegant look at the travails of love of all kinds' Sunday Express

'Elizabeth McKenzie is clearly some sort of genius' Paul Murray

'I can't remember a book I enjoyed more' Nina Stibbe

'Seriously funny and extraordinarily well written' Jonathan Franzen, Guardian books of the year

About the Author

Elizabeth McKenzie's work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. She received her MA from Stanford, was an assistant fiction editor at The Atlantic, and currently teaches creative writing at Stanford's school of continuing studies.

Reviews

'Man oh man, do I love this book! Audacious, imaginative and totally wonderful' Karen Joy Fowler

'I can't remember a book I enjoyed more' Nina Stibbe

'Smart, funny, charming and profound. Elizabeth McKenzie is clearly some sort of genius' Paul Murray

'The squirreliest novel I ever read. I enjoyed it completely' Ursula K. Le Guin

'Raw and weird and hilarious . . . very entertaining' Scarlett Thomas, Guardian

'Ambitious, spirited, funny, daring' Financial Times

'A touching, wildly funny and peculiarly elegant look at the travails of love of all kinds' Sunday Express

'Utterly charming. A true joy of a book' Irish Examiner

'Full of life and humour and compassion' Times Literary Supplement

'Darkly funny, irrepressibly quirky and very, very hard to put down' Sam Baker, The Pool

'Quirky and smart. If you loved Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, you'll love this' Glamour

'Wildly brilliant. Razor-sharp, intimate, hilarious and profound. Every page is a delight' Emma Jane Unsworth

'Terrifically entertaining . . . hard to resist' Daily Mail

'Offbeat, thoughtful, mischievous . . . McKenzie [has] a pin-sharp eye for the tragic-comic, and for dialogue' Herald (Scotland)

'A novel of festive originality' The New York Times

'Unforgettable. A wild ride that you will not want to miss' San Francisco Chronicle

'If The Portable Veblen has a flaw, it is that its caricatures are so on the nose as to make the reader hope to flee the human race' Boston Globe

'Oddball characters and plot turns abound, including talking squirrels and bureaucratic ironies worthy of "Catch-22." But a sober question occupies its core: Do our parents' best intentions do us harm?' Minneapolis Star Tribune

'Accurately and funnily capture[s] the complexities of modern families . . . The Corrections meets The Wallcreeper' Huffington Post

Awards
Short-listed for Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016.



Book Information
ISBN 9780008160395
Author Elizabeth McKenzie
Format Paperback
Page Count 448
Imprint Fourth Estate Ltd
Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
Weight(grams) 320g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 28mm