Imago Bird

This vivid and strikingly witty novel examines the contradictions between the public face and the private experience. Nephew to the prime minister of England, eighteen-year-old Bert tries to make sense of the grown-up world around him, a colorful crowd of television personalities, politicians, Young Trotskyites, pop stars, and eccentric relatives. With the help of his laconic psychoanalyst, Bert questions the relation between exterior and interior reality, while Mosley himself questions art's ability to convey these different realities. Both Bert and Mosley triumph over these challenges by the end of this engaging and innovative novel, part of the series of interlocking novels concerning the fortunes of the six protagonists of Mosley's Catastrophe Practice.

"[A]n inventive, wickedly amusing coming-of-age novel. . . . [Mosley] shapes a narrative the way a nuclear physicist might track a quantum experiment: in thousands of discrete moments, recording his character's immediate sense impressions, the gap between what they speak and what is churning within." (Publishers Weekly 1-13-89)

"Mosley gets all of it—psychoanalysis, youthful sex, and politics—exactly and hilariously right. He is ingenious and cunning. . . . Anybody who is serious about the state of English fiction should applaud Nicholas Mosley's audacity—his skill is unquestionable." (Frank Rudman, Spectator)

"Mosley has a genuinely original view of the world, making Imago Bird the most interesting novel I have read for some time." (Thomas Hinde, Sunday Telegraph 9-14-80)

"Mosley has started one of the very few genuinely experimental projects in modern English writing; whole others cling to pessimism as if it is the artist's passport, he strives to communicate the real presence of optimism, its subtlety, its secrecy, its apparent incompatibility with the language." (Craig Brown, Times Literary Supplement 9-19-80)

"There is a sharp, elliptical quality about Nicholas Mosley's writing that constantly checks the flow of words and prevents you letting the story engulf you. The plot of Imago Bird is simple enough: its the angular telling that gives it its piercing, metallic quality." (Martyn Goff, Daily Telegraph 9-18-80)

Publishers Weekly

Bert, the precocious 18-year-old narrator of this inventive, wickedly amusing coming-of-age novel, comforts his alcoholic Aunt Mavis (an eccentric who drinks in the nude), makes love to his Trotskyite girlfriend in the afternoons and tells his female psychoanalyst how he locked himself in the bathroom at age seven. Then there's Bert's Uncle Bill, who happens to be the prime minister of Great Britain, which may explain why spies and security men seem to follow Bert everywhere. Also unusual is Bert's stammer, which symbolizes hisand the author'sconviction that ordinary language is a poor medium to convey the ``network of connections'' called reality. The author, son of the late politician Sir Oswald Mosley, shapes a narrative the way a nuclear physicist might track a quantum experiment: in thousands of discrete moments, recording his character's immediate sense impressions, the gap between what they speak and what is churning within. First published in England in 1980, this strikingly original novel grew out of Mosley's Catastrophe Practice , a collection comprised of three experimental plays and one short novel ( Cypher )an omnibus volume which this publisher will release simultaneously. (Mar.)