Corey Fah Does Social Mobility
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
The radical, joyful follow-up to the Goldsmiths Prize-winning Sterling Karat Gold.
This is the story of Corey Fah, a writer on the cusp of a windfall, courtesy of the Social Evils prize committee, for whom the actual gong - and with it the prize money - remains tantalizingly out of reach.
Neon beige, with UFO-like qualities, the elusive trophy leads Corey, with partner Drew and surprise eight-legged companion Bambi Pavok, on a spectacular detour through their childhood in the Forest - via an unlikely stint on reality TV. Navigating those twin horrors, through wormholes and time loops, Corey learns - the hard way - the difference between a prize and a gift.
Both radiant and revolutionary, Isabel Waidner's fiction gleefully takes a hammer to false binaries, boundaries and borders, turning walls into bridges and words into wings. Fierce, fluid and funny, they free us to imagine another way of being.
This is a novel about coming into one's own, the labour of love, the tendency of history to repeat itself and the pitfalls of social mobility. It's about watching TV with your lover.
'A head-spinning, mind-bending roller coaster of fun, horror, and subversion. I love it' Kamila Shamsie
'Reading Waidner is like plugging into an electric socket of language and ideas' Guardian
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Astrophysics and a mysterious literary prize propel the darkly funny and very strange latest from Waidner (Sterling Karat Gold). Corey Fah has won the 2024 Fictionalisation of Social Evils award in their unnamed city, known only as the "international capital," where the language is inflected with Czech and Polish terms (their flat is in the Sociální Estate, and their partner's name is Drew Szumski) and a "swampy part of town" is called Florida Rot. Unfortunately, Corey is unable to collect the prize money without the trophy, a hovering "neon beige" object they failed to obtain after the ceremony. Later, Drew tries to help find the trophy, and ends up going through a wormhole into an alternate reality consisting of a scene from a sexed-up Disney movie. When Drew returns, they convince Corey, who's still desperate for the money, to go on the bizarre TV talk show St Orton Gets to the Bottom of It. Sean, the host, claims to have time-traveled from the 1960s, and he invites guests who believe they have found a wormhole. After it turns out Sean might know something about the trophy, Corey's madcap and peculiar search grows increasingly thrilling. Waidner's queer Kafkaesque romp is great fun. Agents: Katie Cacouris and Tracy Bohan, Wylie Agency.
