Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes

Will Self's remarkable new stories center on the disease and decay that target the largest of human organs: the liver. Set in locales as toxic as a London drinking club and mundane as a clinic in an ultraorderly Swiss city, the stories distill the hard lives of their subjects whether alcoholic, drug addict, or cancer patient. I n "Fois Humane," set at the Plantation Club, it's always a Tuesday afternoon in midwinter, and the shivering denizens of this dusty realm spend their days observing its proprietor as he force-feeds the barman vodkaspiked beer. Joyce Beddoes, protagonist of "Leberknödel," has terminal liver cancer and is on her way to be euthanized in Zurich when, miraculously, her disease goes into remission. In "Prometheus" a young copywriter at London's most cutting edge ad agency has his liver nibbled by a griffon thrice daily, but he's always in the pink the following morning and ready to make that killer pitch. If blood and bile flow through liverish London, the two arteries meet in "Birdy Num Num," where "career junky" Billy Chobham performs little services for the customers who gather to wait for the Man, while in his blood a virus pullulates. A moving portrayal of egos, appetites and addictions, Liver is an extraordinary achievement.

About the Author :
Will Self is the author of six novels, four collections of short stories, three novellas, and five works of nonfiction. He has written for newspapers and magazines and appeared regularly on television and radio. He lives in London.

Review :
Liver's stories share an obscure longing for something beyond themselves: they rely on a weird assortment of dei ex machina -- a Martian, a supernatural vulture, a sentient virus, an unconfirmed miracle -- to animate their mundane worlds of bar, office, street and clinic. For all the extravagant, cartoonish hideousness of the worlds many of Self's characters inhabit -- from Soho drinking clubs to Kensington crack houses -- life remains something precious. This inspired collection of four stories uses the liver as a framework and controlling metaphor--there's a tale for each lobe--but is less interested in the organ as a metabolic regulator than in what happens when it's damaged beyond repair. At this point, Self's gift for (ahem) bilious satire kicks in, its larget largely the 'slapstick of addiction' -- for which the reformed junkie has witheringly little time.