Get The BookBrowse Anthology, our 880 page collection of our past decade of Best of Year reviews, now available in hardcover!

Book Summary and Reviews of Liver by Will Self

Liver by Will Self

Liver

A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes

by Will Self

  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • Published:
  • Oct 2008, 276 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

These remarkable new pieces from Will Self each feature the largest of our internal organs: the liver, in varying states of disease and decay. In "Foie Humane" we go inside a Soho drinking club, the denizens of which live in a highly stylised yet emotionally dead state of excess. "Prometheus" tells the story of a dazzlingly successful advertising copywriter who can sell anything to anyone at any time. But things go wrong when he meets Zeus, a bigshot entrepreneur with a beautiful and manipulative wife. Tony Phillips' subterranean Kensington flat is the setting for "Birdy Num Num," where obsessives spend their days in a crepuscular realm of cocaine and heroin. Finally, in "Leberknodel', a terminal liver cancer patient travels to Zurich to commit assisted suicide. When she arrives, however, the cancer mysteriously goes into remission.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"The reliably diabolical Self delivers four longish stories about decay, debauchery and deliverance...despite the occasional hiccup, Self's parts function quite well together to produce a picture of putrid beauty." - Publishers Weekly

"Each story has a distinctive voice—Self employs linguistic bravado in all—but deals with the same ideas and reaches the same conclusion: we are destroying ourselves; so what?" - Library Journal

"Brilliant and blistering, when not overinfatuated with addiction or in undisciplined pursuit of flights of fancy - an intermittently dazzling collection from a restless talent." - Kirkus Reviews

This information about Liver was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Will Self Author Biography

Will Self is the author of many novels and books of nonfiction, including Great Apes; How the Dead Live, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year; The Butt, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction; Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Shark; Phone; the memoir Will; and the essay collection Why Read. He lives in South London.

Link to Will Self's Website

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more short stories...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Husbands
    by Holly Gramazio
    The Husbands delights in asking: how do we navigate life, love, and choice in a world of never-ending options?

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Happy Land
    by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

    From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.

Who Said...

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home: but unlike charity, it should end there.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

J of A T, M of N

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.