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How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

By Toby Young

(15)

| Paperback | 9780349114859

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Book Description

You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again meets The Bonfire of the Vanities, as told by...a male Bridget Jones? And it all really happened.

In 1995 high-flying British journalist Toby Young left London for New York to become a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Other Brits hContinue

You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again meets The Bonfire of the Vanities, as told by...a male Bridget Jones? And it all really happened.

In 1995 high-flying British journalist Toby Young left London for New York to become a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Other Brits had taken Manhattan-Alistair Cooke then, Anna Wintour now-so why couldn't he? But things didn't quite go according to plan. Within the space of two years he was fired from Vanity Fair, banned from the most fashionable bar in the city, and couldn't get a date for love or money. Even the local AA group wanted nothing to do with him. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is Toby Young's hilarious account of the five years he spent looking for love in all the wrong places and steadily working his way down the New York food chain, from glossy magazine editor to crash-test dummy for interactive sex toys. But it's more than "the longest self-deprecating joke since the complete works of Woody Allen" (Sunday Times); it's also a seditious attack on the culture of celebrity from inside the belly of the beast. And there's even a happy ending, as Toby Young marries-"for proper, noncynical reasons," as he puts it-the woman of his dreams. "Some people are lucky enough to stumble across the right path straight away; most of us only discover what the right one is by going down the wrong one first." BEFORE PUBLICATION: "I'll rot in hell before I give that little bastard a quote for his book." -Julie Burchill AFTER PUBLICATION: "A relentlessly brilliant book--a What Makes Sammy Run for the twenty-first century...the funniest, cleverest, most touching new book I've read for as long as I can remember." -Julie Burchill, The Spectator

Critics

  • What makes Toby run

    I met Toby Young when he was a 20-year-old undergraduate and I was the 25-year-old Coolest Broad in London; overnight we became best friends, enjoying a relationship both innocent and worldly -like Swallows and Amazons on drugs. He was my protZgZ, cl ... (read full critics)

    spectator published on Fri, 17 Sep 2010

  • How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

    The young British expat, out to change the world, or just have a good time, is a still a common feature of the social and professional circuit in a number of Asian cities. Indeed, FILTH -- Failed in London, Try Hong Kong -- is an epithet that has sur ... (read full critics)

    asianreviewofbooks published on Tue, 31 Aug 2010

2 Reviews

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  • 2 people find this helpful

    Reading this book felt like having your head lodged into a farting ass.

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    Halfadrop said on Nov 21, 2008 | Add your feedback

  • Some stories are best kept fictional...

    This book is about this British author's experience in making a career in journalism in New York, having landed his "dream job" of working for Vanity Fair, and how he completely failed to achieve anything in a nutshell.

    Throughout the book the author demonstrates his clear ability to lose fri ... (continue)

    This book is about this British author's experience in making a career in journalism in New York, having landed his "dream job" of working for Vanity Fair, and how he completely failed to achieve anything in a nutshell.

    Throughout the book the author demonstrates his clear ability to lose friends and alienate people that led to his failure, and naturally he did not come across as a very likeable character- this is the key problem with this book for me; while I find it entertaining and has a handful of laugh out-loud moments (particularly on his comments about UK/US culture, fame/celeb and his expat expereience), the fact that this is presented as a memoir, as opposed to a fiction means I could not bring myself to love this book, purely because I could not bring myself to like the author, no matter how good he writes.

    It's strange but true, but story like this is best kept fictional...

    Is this helpful?

    olivia said on Jan 4, 2009 | Add your feedback

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9780349114859 Paperback $14.74 $12.33 The Book Depository
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