Bitter Experience has Taught Me: Adventures in Love, Loss and Penury by Nicholas Lezard
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Blurb: In 2007, Nicholas Lezard was kicked out of his home, for reasons we need not go into here. Since then he has been obliged to muster whatever scant internal resources he has — and to pay child support — while maintaining an entirely essential wine habit. From being the adult father in a household with three children he has had to relearn the art of being just one member of a shared home, as if he was a student all over again. His housemates have included his great friend Razors, the psychopath with a heart of gold, and Laurie Penny, the brilliant feminist journalist and campaigner who still would prefer not to empty the bins. He hopes this account of his adventures and misadventures in love, alcohol and games of Night Cricket played against the wall of the local church will be a comfort and an inspiration to all feckless male dolts in similar positions. And an Awful Warning for those who are, as yet, not. (Faber)
Jane Shilling, London Evening Standard
“Lezard’s book is based on a series of columns he wrote for the New Statesman, and some small signs of its origins are visible in occasional slight repetitions and chronological oddities. Not that these detract from the pleasure. He is a master of the comic vignette even (or especially) when consumed with self-pity. From a gruesome visit to a lap-dancing club to a drunken night cricket match in a Marylebone mews, or an encounter with Boris Johnson’s sister, Rachel (“I jumped; I think I may even have screamed a little bit”), his elegant excursion into the post-marital emotional wasteland is sweetened with an almost Wodehousian sense of the preposterous.”
Krissi Murison, The Sunday Times
“He can dispute it all he likes, but he actually seems rather chuffed with his reincarnation as an overgrown teenager. Which is a great result for him, but dire news for the rest of us, who have to listen to him wittering on about it.”
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