Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Fiction & Related items

PILLOW

Andrew Battershill

A mashup of crime fiction and Surrealist thought set in modern-day Toronto, this novel centres on Pillow, a former professional boxer forced into retirement by a traumatic brain injury.

Pillow loves animals. Especially the exotic ones. Which is why he chooses the zoo for the drug runs he does as a low-level enforcer for a crime syndicate run by André Breton. He doesn't love his life of crime, but he isn't cut out for much else, what with all the punches to the head he took as a professional boxer. And now that he's accidentally but sort of happily knocked up his neighbor, he wants to get out and go straight. But first there's the matter of some stolen coins, possibly in the possession of George Bataille, which leads Pillow on a bizarre caper that involves kidnapping a morphine-addled Antonin Artaud, some corrupt cops, a heavy dose of Surrealism, and a quest to see some giraffes.

Andrew Battershill is a writer and teacher currently living in Columbus, Ohio. A graduate of the University of Toronto's MA in creative writing program, he was the fiction editor and co-founder of Dragnet Magazine.

Available products
Book Published 2015-11-17 by Coach House Books
Book Published 2015-11-17 by Coach House Books

Comments

Wildly effervescent. The dialogue, the pacing, the plot: it sizzles, it sparkles. Pillow is a hilarious, humane, fearsomely original novel by a young novelist — this Andrew Battershill; this wet-behind-the-ears rookie! - who writes with such skill and daring that you'd think this was his tenth book rather than his debut.

A fresh, incredibly smart take on literary crime.

A sturdy, traditional heist-and-double-cross plot anchors the various odd elements of this intriguing, funny, and effective debut.

he author's use of metaphor and imagery is exquisite; he plays with surrealism with such a light step so as to appear effortless—as if it were an entirely common extension of hardboiled crime fiction. This debut is accomplished and highly entertaining.