We Think the World of You

By J.R. Ackerley
Introduction by P.N. Furbank

This powerful short novel, with its extraordinary mixture of acute social realism and dark fantasy, was described by J. R. Ackerley himself as "a fairy tale for adults." Frank, the narrator, is a middle-aged civil servant, intelligent, acerbic, self-righteous, angry. He is in love with Johnny, a young, married, working-class man with a sweetly easy-going nature. When Johnny is sent to prison for committing a petty theft, Frank gets caught up in a struggle with Johnny's wife and parents for access to him. Their struggle finds a strange focus in Johnny's dog—a beautiful but neglected German shepherd named Evie. And it is she, in the end, who becomes the improbable and undeniable guardian of Frank's inner world.

Read the introduction (PDF)

Reviews

A hugely funny book.
— Glasgow Herald

The writer of this book belongs to that rare and interesting group of writers who contrive, without ever intending to do so, to make an art of their silences. What he does produce is like nothing that has been written before or since.
— Times Literary Supplement

Also see:

Hindoo Holiday By J.R. Ackerley Introduction by Eliot Weinberger Hindoo Holiday is an intimate and very funny account of an exceedingly strange place, and one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century travel literature.

My Father and Myself By J.R. Ackerley Introduction by W.H. Auden Ackerley's pursuit of his father is also an exploration of the self, making My Father and Myself a pioneering record, at once sexually explicit and emotionally charged, of life as a gay man.

My Dog Tulip By J.R. Ackerley Introduction by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas Ackerley has written a book that is a profound and subtle meditation on the strangeness abiding at the heart of all relationships.

The Slaves of Solitude By Patrick Hamilton Introduction by David Lodge 1940s England is a war zone. But for the residents of Mrs. Payne's boarding house the battlefield is the supper table, and the enemy is the resident of the room next door. Alternately bleak and hilarious, The Slaves of Solitude is a favorite of such writers as Sarah Waters and Nick Hornby.

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