Author:Marius Brill
He was out of her league. She was out of her depth.
When Miranda, the Miss Lonely Hearts of Shepherd's Bush, suddenly finds herself romanced by a tall, dark and deadly spy, she finds her life turned upside down. Could it have anything to do with the book she innocently took from the library, a book with a conspiracy theory about 'love' so devastating that every other copy has been destroyed by MI5 and the writer 'disappeared'?
Spliced through Miranda's romantic adventure are pages from the 'lost' book itself. But the loudest voice in this piece of postmodern madness belongs to the lovelorn book itself, a sentient mass of paper and ink that cannot help falling in love with its reader.
Marius Brill's send-up of po-faced conspiracy stories, spy thrillers and pulp romance is as sharp as Tom Sharpe - imagine Umberto Ecco with a sense of humour. Ludicrously logical and finely spun, this is hare-brained literary fantasy, an erudite romp, and above all, a novel to fall in love with ...
'As a rule, if a book starts talking to you ... head for funny farm. While you're down there, you might meet Marius Brill, who has produced a book that does precisely that, one so entirely fantastical as to be quite scary ... An oddity to savour'
—— Arena'Enjoyable comic tale enhanced by some genuine philosophical questions'
—— Books'Fantastic, hilarious ... verbal pyrotechnics, supported by a fecund imagination of the first order'
—— The Times'An absurd, hilarious, spy-cum-action-cum-postmodern thriller, Making Love is incredibly clever without showing off, self-referential without being self-congratulatory, and a damn good read. Fantastic'
—— The List'An exceptional piece of writing...Making Love is as winning a first novel as I have read in a long time'
—— Sunday Telegraph'A smorgasbord of romantic romp, pseudo-scholarship, urban melodrama and metafictional mystery'
—— Time Out'Yes! Yes! Yes!Utterly original and utterly charming'
—— Sunday TelegraphA hugely ambitious and compassionate novel . . . a jam-packed, dizzying piece of fiction . . . already it's being spoken of as the most important novel about Scotland since Lanark
—— Scotland on Sunday