Praise for Wild Abandon
“[Contains] one of the funniest, most poignant kids I’ve run across in fiction…Wild Abandon had me pestering my wife with favorite lines till she promised to read it.” – Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“He’s an elegant, accessible, and interesting comic novelist, whose work, I suspect, will provide a great deal of pleasure to a great number of people for many years.” – Nick Hornby, The Believer
“[R]ichly plotted and peopled”–Entertainment Weekly
“Populated by flawed, occasionally exasperating, lovable and, above all, thoroughly imagined characters, Wild Abandon is about what happens to children when parents become consumed by their beliefs…A terrific novel.” – Nick Hornby, The Guardian, “Best Books of the Year”
“Think Juno or Bottle Rocket, then read [Wild Abandon]… This novel could be charming and silly, but Dunthorne infuses it with a wry, dark humor that builds to a nearly terrifying conclusion… Complicated, realistic, and unsettling” – Library Journal
“With well-developed characters and a dark humor reminiscent of that in his first novel, Submarine (2008), Dunthorne delivers hilarity and heartbreak while redefining the essence of normality in this story about what makes a family and what makes a family dysfunctional.”–Booklist
“A fresh perspective on modern culture, peppered with colorful dialogue.”–Kirkus
“Manages to be both tender and biting . . . Wild Abandon never lapses into parody, because [Joe] Dunthorne doesn’t scrimp on the small moments that make a character light up. . . . Truly laugh-out-loud hilarious.”—The Independent on Sunday
“Has you wincing on [the protagonist’s] behalf, page after page-turning page . . .Dunthorne does himself proud. [He draws] characters with real staying power.”—The Evening Standard (London)
“Sublimely enjoyable.”—Metro
“Full of finely nuanced details and a restless comic energy . . . builds to a fine apocalyptic climax.”—The Guardian
“Wild Abandon is a very funny novel, but it’s not quite a comic one. . . . There’s a pathos here too. . . . From The Tempest to The Beach, everybody loves the tale of a flawed Utopia. [Wild Abandon] subverts the genre without even seemingly trying to. And it’s hilarious. What’s not to like?”—The Times
“[Dunthorne is] the British Dave Eggers.”—GQ
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