Joy

"A black comedy of exuberance and bite . original, and brilliantly executed; the characters' voices . ventriloquised with flair . This is the wittiest, most addictive piece of literary yuppie-bashing since Martin Amis's Money. Lee is a writer to keep an eye on." Independent "A major new voice in British fiction." Guardian "A brilliant book... Jonathan Lee is one of those rare, agile writers who can take your breath away." -- Catherine O'Flynn, author of What Was Lost "[Joy] displays a real flair for narrative and characterisation.Highly accomplished.The closest comparison that can be made is with Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End, which shares a similarly bravura command of narrative voice.Exquisitely and surprisingly written.it proves that Lee is a significant talent and that his future work should be well worth awaiting." Observer "Lee's writing is witty and engaging, containing something of the wearied disgust of Raymond Chandler's prose.These four voices confiding in the counsellor are entertainingly distinct.The novel's outstanding achievement, however, is the central, spiralling narrative that Jonathan Lee threads among these personal accounts: the intimate story of how Joy came to fall, a forensic portrayal of despair that shows Lee to be an exceptional, brave prose stylist. The dark revelations in the book's final pages are disturbing while not gratuitous, but Lee also allows some credible room for optimism among these cluttered lives. Funny and humane, Joy is an enormously impressive piece of storytelling" -- Tom Williams Literary Review