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The Sweet Smell of Psychosis

Field	Value
image	File:TheSweetSmellOfPsychosis.jpg
caption	First edition
name	The Sweet Smell of Psychosis
author	Will Self
illustrator	Martin Rowson
country	United Kingdom
language	English
publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing
release_date	15 May 1997
media_type	Print (Paperback)
pages	92 pp
isbn	978-0-7475-3154-8
oclc	59651939

The Sweet Smell of Psychosis is English writer Will Self's first published novella. It was printed by Bloomsbury Books in 1996 and features illustrations by Martin Rowson.

Richard Hermes is a London journalist who lives a life of drudging days and cocaine fuelled nights. He falls in with a local media personality called Bell and his crew which includes the delightful and attractive Ursula. Ursula is also a media type writing a good sex column. As Richard attempts to get closer and closer to her, he finds himself consuming more and more until finally psychosis begins to break in.

Plot

Reception

In reviewing the book Katherine Guckenberger concludes: "Self's message is clear: life is ugly and ironic, and the sooner one figures this out, the sooner one can not overcome it but accept it."

Brian Budzynski writing for the Center for Book Culture observed:

"Self’s satirical indictment of urban literary culture is defined within his prose by Richard’s voice, "brusque to the point of rank rudeness". With an air of contempt and "expensively studied disregard", Self’s characters endeavor to persevere within the "knots of desperation" that they have created. One can’t help but think that Self implicates himself as a fellow "hack"; his language perfectly reflects a subculture that is as mysterious as it is dangerous and intriguing."

References

http://weeklywire.com/ww/11-08-99/boston_books_1.html Boston Phoenix Review
http://www.centerforbookculture.org/review/bookreviews/00_1/sweetsmell.html Center for Book culture {{webarchive. link. (25 December 2004)

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

1996-books british-novellas novels-by-will-self

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