Publication Date: Available Now from Unbound
Source: Review Copy
When literary reprobate Foster James wakes up in a strange country house, he assumes he’s been consigned to rehab (yet again) by his dwindling band of friends and growing collection of ex-wives.
But he soon realises there’s something a bit different about this place after he gets punched in the face by Ernest Hemingway.
Is Foster dead? Has his less-than-saintly existence finally caught up with him? After an acrimonious group therapy session with Hunter S Thompson, Colette, William Burroughs, and Coleridge, it seems pretty likely. But he still feels alive, especially after an up-close and personal one-on-one session with Dorothy Parker.
When he discovers that the two enigmatic doctors who run the institution are being torn apart by a thwarted love affair, he and the other writers must work together to save something that, for once, is bigger than their own gigantic egos.
Dead Writers in Rehab was totally insane. Nuts. Right out there and I absolutely loved it. Not only is it darkly witty and hilariously funny but also emotionally resonant and just downright cool.
If you like your literary heroes then this book is chock full of them. Possibly not as you would have imagined them but the author gives them clear and authentic voices and a touch of beautiful madness. The story told as it is in various ways (I’ll let you come to that by yourselves) becomes a bit of a page turner. There is mystery and romance and a whole host of laugh out loud moments, tempered by the very real emotional core of the novel that just grabs you by the heartstrings.
Dead Writers in Rehab kind of defies logic but makes perfect sense – a work of imaginative genius, you will literally enter this world and live in it. The only thing worse than waking up with a hangover from hell is waking up with a hangover IN hell. And there you have it.
I’m probably supposed to make comments about ambitious prose and relative reasoning but frankly who cares – Dead Writers in Rehab is one of the most entertaining reads of my year so far, I laughed, I nearly cried, it works on many many levels, defying genre and description it just IS. Brilliant. Clever. Whimsical. And often quite rude.
Whats not to love? NOTHING that’s what. Go get it!
Highly Recommended.
Purchase Dead Writers in Rehab
Happy Reading!
Sounds fabulous and probably the most original book of the year!