Ringing for You - Softcover

From a strange and wonderful literary land where Jorge Luis Borges meets Jilly Cooper, comes Anouchka Grose Forrester’s dazzlingly witty and accomplished first novel.

‘What is stupider than a receptionist? So stupid that no one dares offer her discourse publicly without a serious mediation: novel, play or analysis (between tweezers)’
Adapted from Roland Barthes

Well, that’s the view from one side of the desk, but now, Anouchka Forrester, new writing talent and ex-receptionist, reveals what’s really going on between phone calls...

Trapped in a temporary job in a sleepy academic institution, a nameless receptionist attempts both to conduct, and write a novel about, her love affair with the mysterious Man Who Mustn’t be Mentioned while impeded by the unwelcome distractions of paid employment. Soon, a simple love story which was meant to start at the beginning and finish at the end becomes a consideration of such vital topics as Visitors, Libel, Master/Slave Dialectics, Lunch, Evil, Ambivalence, the invention of the telephone and the personal safety of the Queen’s husband, as narrator and reader are forced to confront the confusing and comical relationship between fiction and real life.

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IMAGINING A STORY AND FINDING YOURSELF IN ONE, ANYWAY?

Trapped behind the switchboard of a sleepy academic institution, a nameless receptionist attempts to write a novel about her romance with the mysterious Man Who Mustn’t Be Mentioned while impeded by the unwelcome distractions of paid employment.

If you carry on reading you will come across:
· The ins and outs of my frustrating and imperfect love-life.
· A few cod-philosophical spiels about this and that (I’m sorry, but I just can’t help myself).
· A story that gradually builds up to a devastating crescendo and then stays there for a while (I’m being rather optimistic with that last bit but I assure you, at least, that I will somehow find a way to stop being a receptionist and learn some useful truths about life and love before your very eyes).

But soon a love story which was meant to start at the beginning and finish at the end (with the odd educational interlude) gets out of hand, as narrator and reader are forced to grapple with such vital topics as Lunch, Master/Slave Dialectics, Evil, the invention of the telephone, the personal safety of the Queen’s husband and, above all, the confusing and comical relationship between fiction and real life.