Lights Out in Wonderland

by DBC Pierre

Overview

"Lights Out in Wonderland has all the verbal wit and energy of Vernon God Little."—Financial Times

Gabriel Brockwell—aesthete, philosopher, disaffected twenty-something decadent—is thinking terminal. He's decided to kill himself—but not immediately. His destination is Wonderland. The style of the journey is all that's to be decided.

Traveling between London, Tokyo, and Berlin, Gabriel is in search of the bacchanal to obliterate all previous parties. His adventure takes in a spell in rehab, a near-death experience eating a poisonous Japanese delicacy, and finally an orgiastic feast in the bowels of Berlin's majestic Tempelhof Airport. Along the way, Gabriel falls apart, only to reemerge with a new outlook on the world and a mission to right his past wrongs.

Lights Out in Wonderland is an allegorical banquet, a sly commentary on these End Times and the march toward banality, and a joyful expression of the human spirit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393082326
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/25/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	356
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

DBC Pierre’s first novel, Vernon God Little, won the Man Booker Prize. His other novels include Ludmila's Broken English and Lights Out in Wonderland. He lives in County Leitrim, Ireland.

Hometown:

Ireland

Date of Birth:

1961

Place of Birth:

Reynella, Australia

Editorial Reviews

Lights Out in Wonderland isn't perfect…but it's a terrific one-man show. Gabriel is the eloquent misanthrope Pierre has been looking for all along, good company even if you dislike him, gracefully moving from screed to story without missing a beat. He's a man who holds a mirror up to a suicidal society and sees himself, a genuine product of his time.
—The Washington Post

Rodney Welch

"If any novelist can collate the killing irony of what is happening around us it is DBC Pierre."

The Guardian

Man Booker winner Pierre (Ludmila's Broken English,2006, etc.) continues on his polarizing way with another extreme adventure, this one undertaken by a narrator who plans to kill himself.

Readers may not feel too terrible about that, since Gabriel, like Pierre's protagonist inVernon God Little(2002), is initially as obnoxious as he is motor-mouthed. Just checked into rehab by his father, Gabriel puffs defiantly on cigarettes while ranting about capitalism and messing with the staff. Soon he slips away for a final pre-suicide bacchanal with his best friend Smuts, who's working at an ultra-exclusive Tokyo restaurant that serves poisonous (and illegal)fuguto those who can afford it. Unfortunately, once Gabriel gets done loading him up with coke and booze, Smuts recklessly takes the challenge of a customer who wants the fish's extra-toxic liver. The customer winds up in the hospital, and Smuts in jail. The only way Gabriel can spring him is by getting Smuts' shadowy "sponsor," Didier Le Basque, to pull strings. And the only way to do that is to convince Didier, who makes a fortune creating one-of-a-kind banquets for rich thrill-seekers, that Gabriel can connect him to a unique venue. So off Gabriel goes to Berlin, where his detested father had a club in the 1990s. Things get even crazier when Gabriel actually does discover the perfect spot for a decadent feast: miles of tunnels and bunkers built for the Third Reich underneath Tempelhof Airport. Even as he enthusiastically participates in the excesses of Didier's right-hand man Thomas, who's arranging the bash in the bunkers, Gabriel is developing a guilty conscience about the whole affair. Can it be that our hero is growing up? Well, yes: Gabriel eventually drops his intended suicide, along with several other affectations of youth, though Pierre does feel obliged to provide an over-the-top finale involving fireworks both gastronomic and incendiary.

Considerably more mature than its predecessors, and just as scathingly brilliant with words, but this author is definitely an acquired taste.

Kirkus Reviews