My New Favorite Writer: Nick Laird

I have become an enormous fan of the British novelist Nick Laird, a funny and perceptive writer who has a beautiful way with words. Laird’s first novel, Utterly Monkey, came out a couple of years ago. A kind of buddy story, it’s a raucous tale of modern life among young Londoners at work and at play. Laird’s nw novel, Glover’s Mistake, has just been published, and he has delivered a smart and ruefully funny story about relationships and personalities and art and love. Laird is a shrewd observer of people–their fears, anxieties, vanities, but what is striking in both books, what offers sheer pleasure, is Laird’s brilliant way with words. This may not be so surprising to literary cognoscenti, since Laird is also a highly respected poet, which explains why every couple pages of Glover’s Mistake contains an image or turn of phrase that is a pure gem. Here are a few, plucked at random: “A businessman loosened his tie as he strode towards them and then violently yanked it out from his collar, as though it has turned into a cobra. This was the end of work and the end of the week. Night was arriving and the darkness was welcome. It licensed an adjustment of mood.” “The curtains were still open and out to the south, over zone three and zone four and zone five and onwards, a silver bank of cumuli had aggregated. It was shining eerily, lanterned from within by an invisible moon.” “David watched a volley of steam rise from the kettle’s underbite, and then clicked it decisively off.” The kettle’s underbite! Isn’t that sublime!