Smashing People
  • Published: 1 February 2002
  • ISBN: 9780099285953
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $14.99

Smashing People

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Aug 2011
Paperback
1 Feb 2002
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'A rollicking tale... rips along with terrific energy' - Independent on Sunday

It's the 1980s. Thatcher's Downing Street, champagne is the drink du jour, it is the hour of the entrepreneur.

Wilf Wellingborough is not really the man for the moment. Pleasant, friendly, puzzled by life and by love, he's astonished when Jimmy Spalding, whom he's known since childhood, gives him the job of editing Arts Unlimited, a magazine with no circulation to speak of but with enormous prestige.

The story of seven friends from Oxford and their adventures in the world of the media in the 1980s, Smashing People is written with a wickedly funny eye for the absurdities of journalism and publishing and a profound wisdom about the ways of the human heart.
  • Published: 1 February 2002
  • ISBN: 9780099285953
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $14.99
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About the author

Michael Fishwick

Michael Fishwick grew up in London and graduated from Oxford. He works in book publishing, is married and has three children. He is the author of two novels, Smashing People (2001) and Sacrifices (2006).

Also by Michael Fishwick

Sacrifices
See all

Praise for Smashing People

Its portrayal of the vulgarities of literary London hits just the right note

The Times

Michael Fishwick has captured the essence of that nasty decade and its catastrophic insensibility

Sunday Times

A rollicking read. Fishwick has a fine ear for the absurdities and pomposity of the in-crowd chatter

Guardian

Michael Fishwick's debut is not only brilliant but also different. Packed with unobtrusive felicities of phrase and feeling, this wickedly wide-eyed picture of life in the eighties among the magazines and takeovers, the waif-like women and the strangely pathetic domestic lives of those who live by and among the media is top-notch satire

Evening Standard
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