Product Description

A satire of manners about a garden in a West London square and the unlikely members of its garden committee.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #200184 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From the Back Cover
Sap Rising may well be a story about dark dank nature both human and vegetable and our uneasy relationship with the mystic natural forces that move the earth. It may be a parable on the fragile consensus that maintains and tends green England. On the other hand, it might just be a farcical love story set in a garden about nothing of any consequence performed by comic grotesques with a lot of swearing and unnatural sex.

About the Author
A A Gill
A.A. Gill was born in Edinburgh in 1954 and studied at the Slade School of Art. He is the restaurant and television critic for The Sunday Times, for whom he also writes a weekly opinion column. He is the author of two novels, Sap Rising and Starcrossed, and two restaurant biographies, The Ivy Cookbook and Le Caprice. He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Worryingly engrossing
From the outset it appears that Adrian Gill has no other intention than purely to shock and revolt. Through his apathetic style he creates some extreme characters whose totally outrageous and obscene antics initially led me to wish I'd paid heed to the curt but tantalising words of warning from the Guardian on the book's front cover. As the story progresses, however, it becomes apparent that the simple plot purports to nothing more than to serve merely as a vehicle for Gill to take an almost self-deprecating satirical swipe at London's surfeit of aspiring elite, and along the way provides an evidently much-needed outlet for his sometimes overeager imagination. This novel should be accepted as nothing more than the fanciful parody of love and class that it is, readers should relax into it, and savour the pangs of incredulity and disgust that many of it's scenes will undoubtedly provoke.

How odd...
...one of our funniest journalists, and certainly our best restaurant reviewer (okay, not the broadest of fields), yet I had to check I wasn't reading this book upside down, which would have at least explained its utterly turgid impenetrability.

One star because I really like the picture of the fox.

If you were a pigeon, you could f**k forty times a day....
Who can deny that a book that starts and ends with that same line is not the work of genius. So informative!! A A Gill's novel is stunning in its use of imagination, sublime use of language (the only author to rival Kyril Bonfiglioli), and for the originality of all aspects of this story. My husband and I read it twice and bought seven copies. As soon as we had finished it - we started it again. A great pity if such a talented author doesn't get his next book out soon!

Thanks Mr Gill - a real pleasure treasure.