Arnon Grunberg
The Guardian,
1998-12-19
1998-12-19, The Guardian

Paperback Fiction


Isobel Montgomery

Arnon is a Dutch-Jewish Holden Caulfield: a pretty screwed up schoolboy who drinks blackcurrant gin with his girlfriend Rosie and, after too many trips to the school psychologist, gets expelled. Out of school, he gets a part-time job and helps nurse his father now bedridden by a stroke. To escape he visits prostitutes, encounters described with detached exactitude. Writing Blue Mondays, an everyday story of despair, was done as a dare. It's blunt, cool prose has made it a European bestseller.