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Meet Otto and Cecil. Two brothers who grew up privileged in the Welsh countryside. They enjoyed watching nature shows, playing with their pet pony, impersonating their Grandfather...and killing the help. Murder is the family business after all. Downton Abbey, this is not.
However, it's not so easy to continue the family legacy with the constant stream of threats and distractions seemingly leaping from the hedgerow. First, there is the matter of the veritable cavalcade of escaped convicts that keep showing up at their door. Not to mention the debaucherous new tutor who has a penchant for speaking Greek and dismembering sex dolls. Then there's Mummy's burgeoning opioid addiction. And who knows where Daddy is. He just vanished one day after he and Mummy took a walk in the so-called "Ghost Forest."
With Grandfather putting pressure on Otto to step up, it becomes clear that this will all end in only two ways: a nuclear apocalypse or just another day among the creeping thistle and tree peonies. And in a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk, either are equally possible.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 5, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781797164083
- File size: 248582 KB
- Duration: 08:37:52
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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July 17, 2023
Palahniuk (The Invention of Sound) delivers a grisly yet hazy satire of slasher stories. Two 20-something brothers embrace a murderous strain of arrested development in their upper-crust household in present-day Wales, where they listen to stories from their contract killer grandfather, who claims to have offed Jimi Hendrix, Marilyn Monroe, and other celebrities. Despite their ages, the brothers still have governesses, and Cecil, who narrates, looks on while his older sibling, Otto, stabs one of them to death. Cecil also recounts Otto’s other killings, among them a landscaper and the family’s dog. There are also heavy-handed hints about the brothers’ incest. Episodes in the plotless mélange include Otto and Cecil creating a deranged lottery system for their neighbors, where the winner is killed in front of the other players, and their grandfather’s ill-advised attempt to force Otto into the killing-for-hire racket. Palahniuk’s unflinching approach to the macabre material is sure to please many of his fans, but the gratuitous violence and aimless narrative won’t win any new ones. Fight Club this is not. Agent: Sloan Harris and Dan Kirschen, ICM Partners.
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