The Lynne Truss Treasury: Columns and Three Comic Novels Paperback - 2005

by Truss, Lynne

Lynne Truss debuted in America as a guffaw-inducing grammarian, but her British audience has known her for years as a critically acclaimed novelist and columnist. Her previous works are now available stateside in one volume, complete with a new preface.

With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed, a raucous comedy of errors, follows the exploits of Osborne Lonsdale, who writes a weekly column called "Me and My Shed" for a floundering gardening magazine. When the publication is taken over by a gung-ho management team, Lonsdale must learn to cope with his new coworkers.

In Tennyson's Gift and Going Loco, Truss turns a fiendishly clever eye to the literary world. Tennyson's Gift is an imaginative cocktail of Victorian seriousness and farce that re-imagines the world of the nineteenth-century English poet laureate, placing him in the midst of eccentric company that includes dodgy Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll). Going Loco features a critic trying to write a definitive account of the doppelgänger in gothic fiction, amidst the chaos of her domestic life, including paranoia that her cleaning lady is taking over her life.

Making the Cat Laugh is a riotous collection of columns about single life. Truss comments on dating, secondhand smoking, shopping, holidays, and people who ask, "How's the novel going?" All the while, she continues an eighteen-year quest to make her cat laugh. Reportedly, the feline remains unimpressed.

A feast of wit, The Lynne Truss Treasury will delight fans of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Praise for Lynne Truss and her work:

With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed
'Lynne Truss has written a perfect comic novel at the first attempt a witty, ingenious romp.'
–Daily Telegraph

'This book will become a perennial comic delight this Truss must never be stopped.'
–Sue Limb

'Sex, violence, murder and psychoanalysis lurk in the garden shed - a breezy, rude, pleasurable alternative to cutting the grass.'
Obeserver

Making the Cat Laugh
'A small masterpiece of comedy...with abundant close observation, the familiar is made fresh...A continual hoot.'
–The Times

'A truly inventive comic writer ... You should not attempt to read Making the Cat Laugh while travelling on public transport'
–The Irish Times

'[Lynne Truss is] a social humorist of sharp insight and startling candour.'
–Scotland on Sunday

Tennyson's Gift
'A comic novel of subtle distinction ... richly entertaining and at times very moving.'
–The Times

'The perfect summer book. No deck-chair will be complete without it.'
–The Independent

'Terrific...Tennyson's Gift is witty, surprising, oddly compassionate and hugely assured.'
–The Sunday Times

Going Loco
'Truss lets her imagination explode in what can only be described as a riddle devised while coming down of hallucinogens.'
–Time Out

'A classic comic novel, unashamed, exuberant, fiendishly clever, and a joy to read.'
–The Daily Telegraph

'Going Loco is wonderfully underplayed, unpredictable and unexpectedly sinister.'
–Sunday Express