Publisher's Synopsis
Tristram Throstlethwaite has a problem – a big problem. Now, if only he could remember what it was and exactly how he got himself entangled in it, that problem would be very much simpler to solve… Could it be his abject failure in the dating game due to his inability to keep his girlfriends’ names straight? Maybe his tangles with the law, inadvertently mugging a jogger and mistakenly being arrested for bank-robbery? Or perhaps, the huge, hulking fury of a man who clearly thinks that Tristram has insulted him in some mysterious way? What is abundantly clear, however, is the cause of all these woes – a debilitating and chronic absentmindedness that, try as he might, Tristram just cannot overcome. As his hilarious predicaments become ever more disastrous, Tristram finds solace in compiling his own Vague Book, in which he records the absentminded excesses of historical figures: among them Einstein, Edison, Beethoven and the Rev W.A. Spooner, father of the Spoonerism, who on one occasion proposed a loyal toast to ‘the queer old dean’, Queen Victoria. Anybody who has politely thanked a machine for issuing a ticket, or asked directions from a mannequin in a department store, wheeled off someone else's trolley in a supermarket, or simply mislaid keys, spectacles, hats or scarves should appreciate Benedict Nightingale's account of the many misadventures of Tristram Throstlethwaite.
