“I swear to god, this is the best book I have read in years.”
– Chuck Palahinuk
“A dazzling and highly original debut […] one of the most interesting writers to emerge in years. This book deserves to be massive and I think it will be.”
– Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting
“What sticks out about this remarkable debut are its pitchperfect shock ending and John Vincent himself – his complex, conflicting mind, original voice and unnervingly self-defeating existence.”
– Time Out
“Craig Clevenger’s The Contortionist’s Handbook is a brilliant fever dream of a novel that packs as much punch as it did twenty years ago, with sentences that bite like a piranha’s teeth, a melancholy character study for the ages, and a notebook on how to disappear from a cruel world. Read it, read it again, and prepare to be transfixed.”
– Lee Matthew Goldberg, author of The Mentor and The Great Gimmelmans
“A very impressive debut. The reader sees it from the conartist’s perspective, delivered in a snappy, first-person voice that Clevenger writes with assured flair. This is a tightly controlled piece of work with an intriguingly original approach to the genre that marks the author out as one to watch.”
– Metro
“Clevenger has created a manic monologist whose paranoia-inducing world pulls you in completely.”
– Seattle Times
“Clevenger’s talent is revealed in his ability to create a true testament to the resilience of the human spirit.”
– USA Today
“Immaculately detailed and emotionally explosive: this is rolling, riveting stuff.”
– Kirkus Reviews, starred review
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