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The Catastrophic History of You and Me
The Catastrophic History of You and Me
Jul 4, 2025 10:58 AM

Author:Jess Rothenberg

The Catastrophic History of You and Me

If I'd known right then that this was the kid who would grow up to break my heart beyond repair, maybe I would've stayed upstairs on the phone with Tess.

Maybe I would've gone to bed early. Maybe I would've begged my parents to take me with them - even though those doctor dinners are pretty much the boringest things ever.

But I didn't know. Couldn't know. So instead I shrugged and said something really genius like "Um, whatever." And proceeded to fall totally, madly, crazy in love.

Reviews

Inventive, gorgeous, funny and yes . . . heartbreaking. You will absolutely love this book.

—— Lauren Oliver, author of Before I Fall

Dazzling... A brilliant and surprising conclusion to the career of one of the most intelligent and tireless writers of the century

—— Philip Hensher , Mail on Sunday

A fine book

—— Independent

Byrne is full of his characteristic wit, gusto and erudition

—— David Lodge , Observer

A complex dark comedy in fluently rhymed verse. Frequently hilarious and always engaging, this final book simultaneously satisfies the differing demands of prose fiction and narrative verse. Composed mostly in the same ottava rima that Byron used for "Don Juan," Byrne shows Burgess in command of his poetic medium. One might expect an author to experience new spiritual insight on his deathbed, but such a technical breakthrough is highly unusual

—— New York Times

A puzzle box of a novel as fascinating as the clockwork bees it contains.

—— Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus

Wildly imaginative novel is enough to tie the brain in knots; it's a comedy, a thriller, a crazy fantasy ... Harkaway has created a wonderfully entertaining, unguessable kaleidoscope of a novel.

—— Kate Saunders , The Times

This brilliant, boundless mad genius of a book runs on its own frenetic energy, and bursts with infinite wit, inventive ambition and damn fine storytelling. You finish reading it in gape-mouthed awe and breathless admiration, having experienced something very special indeed.

—— Matt Haig, author of The Radleys

Another fizzingly imaginative melodrama…A wildly, irrepressibly exuberant new-weird/ fantasy/ thriller /comedy.

—— Daily Mail

It's an ambitious, crowded, restless caper, cleverly told and utterly immune to precis...[Makes] Don Quixote look sedentary ... a very timely novel about belatedness...Joe is in one sense a 21st-century everyman, indebted to a previous generation, disenfranchised by a conspiratorial state... Angelmaker turns out to be a solid work of modern fantasy fiction, coupling credit-crunch anxiety with an understandable nostalgia for the mythical days of "good, wholesome, old-fashioned British crime".

—— James Purdon , Observer

A story of technology and morality. It's a wonderfully strange, rich piece of work - extremely entertaining and exciting - and has a wonderfully comic aspect to it as well.

—— William Gibson , New York Times

[a] dazzling story..a witty and wonderfully sprawling fantastical thriller.

—— Irish Times
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