About The Book

“None of us noticed the body at first.” So begins Gerald’s Party, which The New York Times Book Review called “far beyond humor and self-parody . . . a work of purest, unremitting malevolence.” Robert Coover’s wicked and surreally comic novel takes place at a chilling, ribald, and absolutely fascinating party. Amid the drunken guests, a woman turns up murdered on the living room floor. Around the corpse, one of several the evening produces, Gerald’s party goes on – a chatter of voices, names, faces, overheard gags, rounds of storytelling, and a mounting curve of desire.

What Coover has in store for his guests – besides an evening gone mad – is part murder mystery, part British parlor drama, part sly and dazzling meditation of time, theater, and love.

Praise

“A savage, unstoppable novel.” –The Boston Globe

“At one and the same time, a metaphysical and comic murder mystery, a Grimm’s fairy tale, a Greek tragedy, and a complicated experimental novel that places Coover, deservedly so, in the company of John Barth, Donald Barthelme, and Kurt Vonnegut.” –Chicago Sun-Times

“Erotic . . . wicked . . . delicious.” –Chicago Tribune Book World

“Gerald’s Party sends up the salon mystery so far it will never come down. What comes down is a terrible indictment of our desires. Robert Coover has written a Hieronymous Bosch–just as nightmarish, just as mesmerizing, just as damning, just as beautiful.” –William H. Gass

“The hallucinogenic, phantasmagoric nightmare of mayhem and ecstasy.” –The New York Times