The Worms Can Carry Me To Heaven

Description

Manolo Follano, a 40-year-old Spanish roue, has built a comfortable life for himself in his hometown by the sea. His architectural design company is thriving, his suits are Italian linen, his cigars Cuban, he s on friendly terms with his two ex-wives and happily free to enjoy the charms of women much younger. For a playboy like Manolo - handsome, fastidious, opinionated and more than a little vain - to be told by his doctor and friend that he is HIV Positive is, it would seem, the end of everything. n Alan Warner s fifth novel, however, this devastating news is only the beginning. Manolo strolls around his familiar haunts recalling, with Proustian clarity, the loves of his life, as he prepares to tell each of them his terrible secret - all the while bracing himself for the final reckoning, and the thin hope of redemption. In a series of vivid, erotic, hilarious flashbacks he plays back his life in glowing Technicolor- each wild and glorious set-piece building towards a complete picture of a life - flawed, certainly, but passionate, richly imagined and deeply humane. novel of stunning visual invention that manages to be both provocative and profound, both shocking and riotously

Alan Warner is the author of four previous novels- Morvern Callar, These Demented Lands, The Sopranos and The Man Who Walks. In 2003 he was chosen as one of Granta's twenty Best of Young British Novelists.

"In 2003 Alan Warner was one of Granta's 20 Best Young British Novelists, and quite right too - he's a writer of stunning originality" -- Kate Saunders * The Times * "The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven is one man's story, funny, moving, swollen with lust and high anxities, sombre in moments, momentously memorable in passages of lyrical intensity, where it sings with a potent underlying sadness" -- Tom Adair * Scotsman * "Funny, profound, shocking and provocative" -- Henry Sutton * Esquire * "An extraordinary novel... contains beautiful writing... moments of superb deadpan comedy" -- Niall Griffiths * Guardian * "Macabre and bizarre... It doesn't lack heart, but only hides it. That in itself... is rather brilliant" * Spectator *