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Prague Author's Second Novel, Not So Much
Thanks again to Carlson for pointing out the excellent Budapest gossip blog Pestiside (see previous post). Among the first posts I came across when I went there was the hilarious Local Writers Celebrate Failure of Novelist's Second Work, a skewering of Budapest expats' reaction to Arthur Phillips's new novel The Egyptologist, follow-up to his incomprehensibly popular first book Prague set (oh-so-ironically) in Budapest.
I'm sure many of you read that first novel. I suspect some others of you might remember the pleasure I had meeting Phillips at a book reading.
Phillips is actually quite a nice guy, whom I've met twice now (though I don't know anyone from our expat gang of friends who remembers him from when he lived there for two years or so in the early 1990s). This time around I am not going to make the same mistake: I have no intension of reading this book, though I have no reason to suspect it is anything other than excellent (save this review in the NY Times).
Rick E. Bruner | Gen Expat Life Updates | Sep 17, 2004 | Comments (3)
Comments
Actually, Rick, turns out Hadley knew the dude. She actually played a version of that silly game in the first pages of the book. (Frankly, I think that passage sold the book to the publishers.) The lesbian photographer is actually somebody we both know (but not Hadley).
Steven Carlson | Sep 27, 2004
Yes, I had someone else speculate about who the photographer was. I'm spacing on her name now, though I can picture her. Was it Shari? Something like that. I have her name at home on my other computer, in a list of former expat friends to track down still.
Phillips might be a nice guy, but he writes about as well as my ass can chew gum. Give me an asshole who has some talent anyday.
