English Settlement: A NovelA thirty-something, would-be master of the universe tries to reinvent himself in London in this hip and hilarious novel about ambition, family, missed connections, and Anglo-American relations It is the late nineties. The Iraqis are in Kuwait and the former decade’s financial bubble has burst. From his high-backed swivel chair in an eight-foot cubicle on the sixth floor of a London management-consulting firm, Scott Marshall prays he can survive the coming carnage. The son of an inveterate Anglophile, Marshall moved to England when his former employer—Manhattan’s Hassenblad Consultancy—went belly-up. With the optimistic wine- and money-flowing days of Reaganomics vanished into a sinkhole of blighted hope and stalled aspirations, Scott is desperate to hold on to his job amid massive layoffs. He is meanwhile dealing with a girlfriend hiding a nasty secret; an embattled football club that conceals a wellspring of deceit and subterfuge; and the reappearance of his father, whose ill-timed visit unleashes a swarm of ghosts from the past. From Wall Street to Belgravia, English Settlement is a novel about manners, money, morals, and national identity on both sides of the Atlantic. |
Contents
In the City | |
Things I carried | |
Some statistics | |
Model worker | |
PART | |
Real nice | |
This is a | |
About personality | |
Orange claw hammer | |
PART THREE | |
A present from London | |
Controversy or | |
The happiest day of my life | |
Not one of your glamour clubs | |
Thronging baleful clusters | |
How Barry does | |
Panama City motel | |
About the Author | |
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afternoon Anthony Powell Artie Tripp asked bank Barry Mower Barry Mower Lounge Barry's beneath Birningside Blackfriars Bridge boys called cigarette client club corridor couple Cunning Stunts D. J. TAYLOR Danny Hassenblad Darren desk Devoto door Easterhouse English eyes face faint Farq and Quoodle father floor football fuck Fulham Road girls going Greg hair hand happened head Henrietta hundred Jimmy Hood kind light Linda look management consultant Manchester United Manhattan Margaretsville mean Melanie minutes Miranda morning mother never night nods once partner Pat Arrowsmith photograph players Quoodle's remember Scott seems silent Singing Postman Slater somehow someplace Sondra stare street suddenly Sure talk teenage tell Terry Long there's thing thought turned Tusker Holloway Uh huh Walham Town wall watch week weird West Virginia window