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Colors Insulting to Nature

Published
Jun 2005
Main Genre
General Fiction General Fiction
Rating
Pages
350

About This Book

A hilarious and original debut novel that skewers our craze for celebrity.

Liza Normal, like a million teenagers before her, wants desperately to be famous. If she can't be famous, she'll settle for infamy. But no Pop Idol contest on earth will ever crown someone like Liza, with her spookily vulgar 'vocal stylings' and her stripper's wardrobe. Her wits addled by celebrity culture, the ashes of failed stardom in her mouth, she decides to turn her back on her tinsel dreams and embrace her outsider status with a ferocious purity.

Colors Insulting to Nature is a brazenly hilarious odyssey through teen humiliation: the crushes who spurn her, the revenges gone wrong, and the dawning realization that life doesn't come with a soundtrack that tells you when to laugh and cry or an audience to applaud at the end. Cintra Wilson is a pyrotechnic wit – the natural heir to Douglas Coupland and the challenger to Dave Eggers. This novel will have readers howling with laughter and writhing with retrospective embarrassment. She is a staggering talent.

Reviews

Reviews for Wilson's plays:

‘Incisive, inflamed, inflammatory, offensive, astute, vulgar, mean, wildly funny, compassionate, and sweeping' Boston Globe

‘A brilliant writer with a deliciously warped and blisteringly wiseass take' Entertainment Weekly

‘Storms the cheesy walls of popular culture like a band of punk-chick Visigoths, and ravages the sequin clad icons within' Time Out New York

‘If she keeps being so funny and brutal, she'll end up famous herself' USA Today

About the author

Cintra Wilson is a playwright, essayist and former columnist. Her essays on the disease of celebrity were collected into a book called A Massive Swelling and functioned as research for this novel. She lives in New York; Colors Insulting To Nature is her first novel.

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Formats & Editions

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Paperback

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Trade Paperback
First Edition Jun 2005 HarperPerennial (UK) ISBN13 9780007154579 ISBN10 0007154577
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Hardcover

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Hardcover
Aug 2004 HarperCollins (UK) ISBN13 9780007154609 ISBN10 0007154607
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eBook

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eBook
Oct 2010 HarperCollins (UK) ISBN13 9780007405251 ISBN10 0007405251
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eBook
Oct 2010 HarperPerennial ISBN10 B004TSCBE2
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