Product Description

Mr Phillips is an accountant who lies in bed with his wife and dreams of other women. When he loses his job and tells no one, his first day out of work takes in a false journey to the office, a stroll with a pornographer in Battersea Park, a blue film, and a bank robbery in Knightsbridge.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62251 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Fiftysomething Victor Phillips is a senior-ish accountant with respected City firm Wilkins & Co. Or rather, he was: unbeknown to his sons, his saintly wife and his nosy suburban neighbours, Mr Phillips has lost his job, and doesn't know what to do next. So what he does do is the most sadly predictable: pretend he's still in work. On the morning of the day's events that comprise the entirety of this novel he rises as per, breakfasts as per and steps out into the city, as per. From then on, though, he embarks on a bizarre odyssey around London, doing various sad, strange or aimless things: if he's not ogling schoolgirls on buses, he's being accosted by nutters in the Tate or trying to meet TV celebs during a bank robbery.

Taken as read, the whole might sound odd: a Diary of a Next To Nobody. What saves from the book from being weirdly boring is Lanchester's skill in capturing Mr Phillips' inner voice: as the ex-accountant schleps around town he is constantly working out, for instance, how many women take their clothes off for money, or how much more likely it is one will die on any given week than win the National Lottery (about 3,000 times more likely). All this is very witty and very well done--and very much the meat of the book. If the novel is ultimately aimless, that is, of course, the point. John Lanchester has taken an average day in an averagely tragic life and made from it, if not great art, a readable, amusing and perceptive novel. --Sean Thomas

Amazon.co.uk Review
Fiftysomething Victor Phillips is a senior-ish accountant with respected City firm Wilkins & Co. Or rather, he was: unbeknown to his sons, his saintly wife and his nosy suburban neighbours, Mr Phillips has lost his job, and doesn't know what to do next. So what he does do is the most sadly predictable: pretend he's still in work. On the morning of the day's events that comprise the entirety of this novel he rises as per, breakfasts as per and steps out into the city, as per. From then on, though, he embarks on a bizarre odyssey around London, doing various sad, strange or aimless things: if he's not ogling schoolgirls on buses, he's being accosted by nutters in the Tate or trying to meet TV celebs during a bank robbery.

Taken as read, the whole might sound odd: a Diary of a Next To Nobody. What saves from the book from being weirdly boring is Lanchester's skill in capturing Mr Phillip's inner voice: as the ex-accountant schleps around town he is constantly working out, for instance, how many in women take their clothes off for money, or how much more likely it is one will die on any given week than win the National Lottery (about 3,000 times more likely). All this is very witty and very well done--and very much the meat of the book. If the novel is ultimately aimless, that is, of course, the point. John Lanchester has taken an average day in an averagely tragic life and made from it, if not great art, a readable, amusing and perceptive novel.--Sean Thomas

Customer Reviews

Nearly a masterpiece
Mr Phillips isn't at work today, he's having a day off, a day out. In his pinstripe suit, briefcase in hand, he wanders around London striking up the occasional conversation, catching buses, taking his son unawares for lunch and witnessing various oddities including a robbery at the bank. Why is he out and about in this way? Because Mr Phillips was made redundant last Friday and hasn't told anybody.

The book takes us through the rich landscape of everyday trivialities, as seen against his own sinking sense of futility and emptiness. It perfectly captures the beauty of the mundane, the fascination of other lives fleetingly glimpsed, the spotlight-on-the-moment magic of nothing in particular, the exotic and the banal.

The book's only fault - and I would guess this is what kept it off the shortlists - is that we never quite understand the need for secrecy, why he has to hide his redundancy from his wife to the extent of getting suited and briefcased, and toddling off out of the house for the day. Granted, some men do exactly that under the same circumstances, but given that this is the novel's premise we need more of a clue - especially since we learn quite a bit about the wife, and she appears no less supportive than most. Still, it remains a wonderful read, deeply memorable and at times frankly hilarious. Worth four-and-a-half stars if the sytem allowed.

Hilarious
I think reviewers who dislike this book have completely missed the point. Its not about how accurate office life is depicted, or whether the correct accountancy and word processing programmes are name checked, its about how out of control we feel about modern life and how this is reconciled in somebody's head. I first read this book when my accountancy career took a bit of a wobble, and always return to it for a bit of comfort! It is absolutely convincing on the consistency, the character, and the expression of Mr Phillips thoughts. I particularly enjoyed the calculation of the chances of dying compared to winning the national lottery. Its also stunningly accurate in respect of men under stress thinking constantly about sex (sorry ladies) and also on the sheer pointlessness of about 90% of modern life. As this review appears to be becoming more about me than the book, I'll stop right here!

A Day in the Life of an Everyman
This semi-homage to Mrs. Dalloway follows the title character as he wanders around London on the first Monday after being fired from his longtime job as an accountant. Dressed and accesorized for work as usual, he walks, takes buses, and the subway, encountering performance artists, porno publishers, tennis players, museum goers, tourists, a TV presenter, his eldest son, a neighbor or two, and some bank robbers. These ambulatory and mental meanderings are recounted in a witty and restrained tone with deceptively simple precision. His lone quirk is an accountant's love of translating everything into numerical values, percentages, and probabilities. Lanchester is careful not to overuse this device, and thus it remains amusing and playful throughout.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Phillips spends a great deal of his time musing about sex, death, sex, love, sex, life, and soforth. The middle-aged, middle-class Londoner is clearly meant to be an everyman, a sympathetic type recognizable to all readers. So, although he has no particular "deep thoughts" or epiphanies over the course of his day, his interactions still leave one with a benevolent sense of humanity. It's a much more gentle and embracing book (despite some reader's prudish reactions to certain sexual details) than his well-received, if overly clever, debut, The Debt to Pleasure. This novel can almost be seen as the flipside to that one, totally different, but equally good. Not great, but good.