Whatever Love Means
by David Baddiel
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Description
Like most people, Vic Mullan - once described by his best friend Joe as 'a man whose sense of social responsibility is exhausted by pulling over to let an ambulance by' - can remember where he was and what he was doing on the day of Princess Diana's death. Yes, he can remember it particularly well: he was at home, beginning an affair with Emma, Joe's wife. The opening sections of David Baddiel's second novel chart the history of an intense and passionately sexual liaison set against the show more background of the most hysterical time in recent memory. But as the months wear on, and life and love return to normal, so things become more complex between Vic and Emma. And then, tragedy - a real, local, small-scale tragedy, as opposed to a national, iconic, mythological one - intervenes. Part-satire, part-love story, part-whodunnit, and part-meditation on the nature of sex and death, WHATEVER LOVE MEANS confirms Nick Hornby's assertion that David Baddiel has 'gone straight into the First Eleven of young contemporary British novelists'. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Baddiel is a surprisingly good author. He captures men's conversations and thinking well. But this is quite a bleak book, where selfishness leads to tragedy.
Abandoned, self indulgent, verbose
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Author Information
42+ Works 2,256 Members
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1999
- Important events
- Death of Princess Diana
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 207
- Popularity
- 157,340
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.19)
- Languages
- Dutch, English, French, German
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 1
