Body Parts

Will Self continues his preoccupation with anatomical titles—his last book was entitled The Butt, an early work was Cock & Bull—with Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes (Bloomsbury). This tome contains four stories interconnected by the state of the various characters’ livers; a London barkeep, a woman with terminal liver cancer which suddenly goes into remission, an advertising agency hotshot, and a junkie provide the canvas for Self’s seemingly limitless imagination and keen intelligence.

For readers who may not have availed themselves of Will Self’s oeuvre, Geoff Nicholson wraps it up in a tidy package: