Making Nice

by Ferdinand Mount

Overview

The deliciously sharp new novel from Ferdinand Mount, author of the Sunday Times Book of the Year Kiss Myself Goodbye

Ferdinand Mount's stinging satire plunges into the dubious world of London PR firms, the back rooms of Westminster and the campaign trail in Africa and America. We follow the hapless Dickie Pentecost, redundant diplomatic correspondent for a foundering national newspaper, together with his stern oncologist wife Jane, and their daughters Flo, an aspiring ballerina, and the quizzical teenager Lucy.

The whole family find themselves entangled in an ever more alarming series of events revolving around the elusive Ethel (full name Ethelbert), dynamic founder of the soaring public relations agency Making Nice.

With echoes of Evelyn Waugh and The Thick of It, Making Nice is a masterly take on the madness of contemporary society and the limitless human capacity for self-deception.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472992864
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	09/30/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	350 KB

About the Author

Ferdinand Mount is a novelist, essayist and former editor of the Times Literary Supplement from 1991 to 2002. He was previously head of the Number Ten Policy Unit under Margaret Thatcher. As a journalist, he has contributed regular columns to The Spectator, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times. His novel Of Love and Asthma, part of a six-volume series, A Chronicle of Modern Twilight, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1992. He lives in North London with his family.
Ferdinand Mount was born in 1939, the son of a steeplechase jockey, and brought up on Salisbury Plain. After being educated at Eton and Oxford, he made various false starts as a children's nanny, a gossip columnist, bagman to Selwyn Lloyd, and leader-writer on the doomed Daily Sketch. He later surfaced, slightly to his surprise and everyone else's, as head of Margaret Thatcher's Policy Unit and later editor of The Times Literary Supplement. He is married with three children and three grandchildren and has lived in Islington for half his life. Apart from political columns and essays, he has written a six-volume series of novels, A Chronicle of Modern Twilight, which began with The Man Who Rode Ampersand, based on his father's racing life, and included Of Love And Asthma (he is a temporarily retired asthmatic), which won the Hawthornden Prize for 1992. He also writes what he calls Tales of History and Imagination, including Umbrella, which the historian Niall Ferguson called 'quite simply the best historical novel in years'. His most recent titles for Bloomsbury Continuum include Big Caesars and Little Caesars, Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca and the novel Making Nice.

Table of Contents

1 Champing
2 Smiley Face
3 Hi-Vis
4 The Real Greek
5 Board Games
6 On Safari
7 Flo Flown
8 Jerrybuilt
9 Ghosting
10 Spinland
11 In the Cockpit
12 The Golden Jacket
13 The Locator
14 Lost and Found

Thanks

Editorial Reviews

Ferdinand Mount's exquisite writing draws you into a gorgeously horrid world of lies, where all authenticity is faked, and where the biggest deceptions are the ones we practise upon ourselves. Perhaps you recognise the place he's talking about. He exposes such cold truths with such warmth – I am in eternal awe of his writing, wherever I find it.” —Marina Hyde

“Mount's storytelling is irresistible” —Literary Review

“One of our finest prose stylists” —Daily Telegraph

“Making Nice is the funniest, shrewdest, most elegant novel I have read in years. What will Mount conjure up next?” —The Oldie

“…like all his novels…show his gifts for comedy, physical description and for capturing idiosyncratic mannerisms.” —Wall Street Journal

“...This pacey book is great fun to read.” —Sunday Times

“At Making Nice's heart is a serious lesson about the fine line between success and scandal, truth and lies.” —Chloe Ashby, The Spectator

“A razor-sharp comedy of political misfortunes.” —Literary Review

“Mr Mount has written a satire to be consumed in one sitting, a pointed critique of the modern world delivered with pluck and verve.” —The Economist

“[Mount] is very good on behavioural quirks, often evoking them with unexpected analogies… Making Nice is a comedy of manners with satirical trappings, and highly enjoyable, too.” —Nicholas Clee, Times Literary Supplement

“Seldom can a satirical novel have proved more pertinent.” —Sarah Meyrick, The Church Times

“So begins a rollicking rollercoaster ride through modern politics…showcasing Mount's pitch-perfect comic ear and a keen eye for caricature.” —Catholic Herald

“A razor-sharp political satire from the author of The Sunday Times Book of the Year Kiss Myself Goodbye… This book is exceptionally well-written… a feast of shrewd observations… the prose is often deliciously rich in description and imagery.” —Press & Journal

From the Publisher