Caroline's Bikini: A Novel - Hardcover

Kirsty Gunn is an internationally awarded writer who published her first novel with Faber in 1994 and since then eight works of fiction, including short stories, as well as a collection of fragments and meditations, and essays. She is Professor of Writing Practice and Study at the University of Dundee and lives in London and Scotland with her husband and two daughters.

"A restless innovator ... Trumps even her own past work in its audacity ... Guts and cheek to spare ... Reminded me of James’s serpentine late style as much as it did the prose of Virginia Woolf or Gunn’s compatriot, Katherine Mansfield ... Caroline’s Bikini nods to its Modernist ancestors but never grovels to them ... Gunn’s serious playfulness will make you think again about every convention of fiction we lazily take for granted ... Nothing much may happen. But the feeling ― and the writing ― overflows."―Boyd Tonkin, Financial Times

"Gunn’s playful and endearing voice makes it a joy to read. Who knew postmodernism could be this fun?"―Tatler

"A really superb, very readable novel."―Guardian

"Remarkable ... demands that readers put themselves into the same headspace as they would before embarking on a novel by, say, William Faulkner, James Joyce or Woolf."―Financial Times

Gunn has written a blissfully anarchic and inspiring novel about the futility of writing; a delightful paradox in itself."―Literary Review

"‘[a] bold and brainy enterprise.’"―Observer

"...when restless innovators such as Ali Smith, Nicola Barker, Sarah Hall, Will Self, Jon McGregor, Deborah Levy, Gwendoline Riley and Eimear McBride set much of the agenda for fiction...Kirsty Gunn belongs in this exemplary few..."―Financial Times