Vernon Subutex Two

Alternative Paris at its most compassionate, angry and funny . . . Spiky rants on the sick state of bourgeois society enliven and provoke - it's all très cool * The Sunday Times, "Best books of the last five years" *
Funny, irreverent and scathing * Guardian *
Virginie Despentes is a true original, a punk rock George Eliot with a keen taste for the pitiable innards of her characters: no one else has her slyly penetrating eye, her spiky sense of humor, her razor wit that cuts like wire through the accumulated crud of our age's default thought patterns. In her masterful hands,Vernon Subutex becomes a droll, hilarious, insightful record of our unfortunate times -- ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN * author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine *
Vernon Subutex Two presents Paris in all its glory and its grime. Sharply translated by Frank Wynne, this is the best multi-volume fiction series since Elena Ferrante * 1843 *
Virginie Despentes continues her picaresque tour de force with the same driving energy sustained by vicious wit, exasperation, stark insight and compelling empathy . . . In her seething Paris of messed-up losers and relentless operators, Despentes exposes a universal society gone mad on greed, fear and ruthlessness * Irish Times *
Truthful, brash, brilliant and shocking. I was both appalled and mesmerised -- Victoria Hislop * The Week *
Virginie Despentes Vernon Subutex trilogy savages contemporary life . . . Vernon Subutex Two is equally good and is my book of the year * The Sunday Times, "Best Books of 2018" *
Virginie Despentes's Vernon Subutex trilogy is the zeitgeistiest thing I ever read . . . [It] has dupes and assholes and racists and the people they hate and a stunning diversity of internal monologues and trans true love. Like the last decade, it searches for a happy ending that isn't merely personal and can't find it . . . These novels with their depth and detail kick TV's sorry ass -- Nell Zink * Bustle, "Best Books of the 2010s" *
It's bastards across the board in Virginie Despentes's brilliantly unshackled trilogy Vernon Subutex . . . What keeps you reading is the voice - acerbic, unconstrained, bitterly funny and, despite the book's intimations of enlightenment, perpetually pissed off. * Wall Street Journal *
A satire on fading punk politics . . . Despentes at her most compassionate, and hopeful * The White Review *
Like William S. Burroughs updated for the age of WhatsApp, Vernon Subutex Two straps our current world to a chair and interrogates the hell out of it * The Millions *
A sexed-up epic * Publisher's Weekly, starred review *