TAKING THE DEVIL'S ADVICE

 

Spending the summer with his ex-wife, his children, his ex-gardener (and ex-wife's new husband) was never going to be a good idea.

Perhaps Oliver should have expected the autobiography he was writing to be constantly sabotaged? Perhaps he should have guessed that he'd have scorn and derision poured upon him? But then Oliver was a philosopher, always happier with abstraction than reality, and the realities of his life have never been simple. Now they're about to come crashing down around him in the most unexpected and hilarious of ways.

Taking the Devil's advice was shortlisted for the Glasgow Herald People's Prize in 1991 and (translated into French as Les Confessions de Victoria Plum) for the Grand Prix des Lectrices d'Elle in 1993.

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"A brilliantly orchestrated slanging-match"

Independent

"Anne Fine's black comedy bounces along its sprightly one-liners without flagging"

Observer

"Shot through with wit, and full of effervescence and good humour"

Financial Times

"It is said to take two to make a quarrel but the casus belli for Constance after sixteen years of marriage is her philosopher husband Oliver's serene unawareness of ever having given grounds for one... clever and entertaining... a direly witty achievement"

Guardian

"Alive with brazen charm"

Mail on Sunday

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Taking the Devil's Advice, a novel for adults by Anne Fine, was first published by Viking in 1990 (ISBN: 978-0-670-83191-3). This edition is now out of print.

The paperback edition followed in 1991. It was reissued by Black Swan in 1999, and again on 31st December 2010; order the new edition now from Amazon or from any bookshop or library, quoting the ISBN 978-0-552-77766-7.

Taking the Devil's Advice has been published:

• in an ISIS large print edition
• as an ISIS large print paperback

and as an ISIS Audiobook read by read by Cornelius Garrett: order the audiobook direct from the publisher, Isis on CD or audio cassette.

It has also been translated into French and German.

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