Publisher's Synopsis
From a strange and wonderful literary land where Jorge Luis Borges meets Jilly Cooper, comes Anouchka Grose Forrester's dazzlingly witty and accomplished first novel. 'What is stupider than a receptionist? So stupid that no one dares offer her discourse publicly without a serious mediation: novel, play or analysis (between tweezers)' Adapted from Roland Barthes Well, that's the view from one side of the desk, but now, Anouchka Forrester, new writing talent and ex-receptionist, reveals what's really going on between phone calls...Trapped in a temporary job in a sleepy academic institution, a nameless receptionist attempts both to conduct, and write a novel about, her love affair with the mysterious Man Who Mustn't be Mentioned while impeded by the unwelcome distractions of paid employment.;Soon, a simple love story which was meant to start at the beginning and finish at the end becomes a consideration of such vital topics as Visitors, Libel, Master/Slave Dialectics, Lunch, Evil, Ambivalence, the invention of the telephone and the personal safety of the Queen's husband, as narrator and reader are forced to confront the confusing and comical relationship between fiction and real life.
