On the Run with Mary

"One of the most extraordinary, original--and funniest--books I have ever read. Subversive, satirical, like a farcical, erotic, animal-human animated film" (Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, author of Kinsey: Sex the Measure of All Things). Shining moments of tender beauty punctuate this story of a youth on the run after escaping from an elite English boarding school. At London's Euston Station, the narrator meets a talking dachshund named Mary and together they're off on escapades through posh Mayfair streets and jaunts in a Rolls-Royce. But the youth soon realizes the seemingly sweet dog is a handful; an alcoholic, nymphomaniac, drug-addicted mess who can't stay out of pubs or off the dance floor. In a world of abusive headmasters and other predators, the sexually omnivorous youth discovers that true friends are never needed more than on the mean streets of 1960s London, as he tries to save his beloved Mary from herself. On the Run with Mary mirrors the horrors and the joys of the terrible twentieth century. Jonathan Barrow's original drawings accompany the text. "A masterpiece by a young genius, fated to die shortly after he had completed it." --A. N. Wilson, author of Prince Albert: The Man Who Saved the Monarchy "A unique masterpiece from a bizarre mind. To say it's Lewis Carroll meets Jean Genet . . . would be to belittle its farcically-filthy originality." --Nicholas Haslam, author of Redeeming Features "Dementedly cheerful . . . A rollicking catalogue of sex, violence, and acts of cartoonish cruelty, Barrow's novel is a schoolboy's happy nightmare writ large; readers may find it impossible to look away." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author :
Jonathan Barrow was born in 1947, an hour's drive north of London in Sawbridgeworth, England, the youngest of five brothers. He attended Harrow, the boarding school whose alumni include Winston Churchill and Lord Byron, but never completed his secondary education. Barrow worked at the Dorchester and Claridge's hotels in London before being hired as an advertising copywriter. He published short stories--keenly observed, outrageously inventive parodies of English snobbishness and eccentricities--in The London Magazine and exhibited his drawings at London's Redfern Gallery, which has represented leading British artists like Henry Moore and David Hockney. His brother found the closely-typed, much scribbled-upon manuscript of On the Run with Mary in Barrow's office drawer the day after the author's death in 1970, at age twenty-two. He died in a car crash alongside his fiancée, two weeks before they were to be married. This book, in which the narrator witnesses and uncannily prophesies what was planned as a wedding turn into a funeral, can be seen as both protracted suicide note and feverish love letter.

Review :
A masterpiece by a young genius, fated to die shortly after he had completed it. A.N. Wilson, author of "Victoria: A Life"; "Tolstoy: A Biography" and "Wise Virgin" The headlong energy and happy perversity of On the Run with Mary makes one admire much of what Barrow did, and wonder with sorrow at what he might have done. Sam Lipsyte, author of "The Ask" and "Home Land" A unique masterpiece from a bizarre mind. To say it s Lewis Carroll meets Jean Genet would be to belittle its farcically-filthy originality. Nicholas Haslam, author of "Redeeming Features" One of the most extraordinary, original and funniest books I have ever read. Subversive, satirical, like a farcical, erotic, animal-human animated film. Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, author of "Kinsey: Sex the Measure of All Things" "