Being Alexander
A Novel
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Alex was a pushover. Alexander pushes back.
Alex was a chump. Alexander is a champ.
Alex moved in the gutter. Alexander hits the fast lane.
Everyone likes Alex Fairfax. He’s dependable, friendly, hardworking. He is also a sucker. A sucker who sits by while his oily coworker maliciously sabotages his advertising career, then steals Alex’s girlfriend from under his very nose. But Alex is a sucker who has finally had enough of “yes sir” and “thank you.” Enough of kowtowing to the powerful. Enough of being polite.
So Alex transforms himself into Alexander—avenger of the maligned. Sure, he lost his job and has to share a crummy apartment with a bunch of twentysomething hippies, but nothing will stop Alexander from exacting sweet vengeance on the long list of those who have done him wrong.
With the right clothes, the right hair, and the right attitude, Alexander plots to ascend through the ranks of the elite, tear down the company that refused to stand by him, and humiliate his snake of a colleague and disloyal ex-girlfriend. But while pulling off one stealthy stunt after another, wooing away clients and ruining a few choice careers, Alex discovers that being a shark isn’t all glitz and glamour—and that his own heart still beats to a very tender drum. . . .
A sharp, edgy, witty novel of delicious revenge, Being Alexander stars the best kind of character—one readers can’t quite decide whether to loathe or to love. But in the end, the fact remains: for Alex to truly find himself, he had to become someone else. The result is an irresistibly wicked comedy of ill-manners.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A trod-upon nice guy is transformed into a ruthless avenger in this one-note debut novel. In the course of a week, London advertising writer Alex Fairfax catches his girlfriend astraddle his boss, finds his Jaguar sacked by hoodlums, is fired from his job and hit by a flying glass in a barroom brawl. Then, for good measure, he is mugged on the way home from the hospital. He reincarnates himself as the tough and narcissistic Alexander, intending to revenge himself on all those who have wronged him. As he puts it: "I am not a loser. Alex was a loser. I am Alexander. Yes, I am. I am Alexander." Similar renderings of this quote turn up all through the narrative, which makes for slow going. The newly minted Alexander starts his own instantly successful company, splurges on a designer wardrobe and wins Camilla, a snobbish girlfriend he showers with expensive gifts. Alexander gains access to upper-crust British society through Camilla's connections, and its soir es offer some of the book's best moments; however, the outcome of their romance is swift and predictable. Sparling fleshes out her familiar premise in rapid-fire, telegraphic prose and inserts several quirky, stream-of-consciousness chapters throughout the novel, but no pyrotechnics can quite jolt the plodding tale to life. Neither Alex nor Alexander is a particularly sympathetic character, and his assorted friends and enemies are never fully fleshed out. Movie rights purchased by New Line Cinema; foreign rights sold in six countries.
