A Box of Matches
Nicholson Baker
  • Published: 1 March 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099448389
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $26.99

A Box of Matches

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'Nicholson Baker is our foremost authority on life's unexamined routines, our laureate of ritual' Scotland on Sunday

A man gets up earlier and earlier each day, dresses in the dark, makes his coffee and lights the fire with a box of matches. Then he rummages through the thoughts that crowd his head and preoccupy him. Here is mid-life domesticated man, whose thoughts veer brilliantly from love and marriage, to firelighters and suicide, in the twinkling of an eye.

This is Baker at his best, humorous and observant, revealing the underlying truths about the ephemerality of life, the joy of small things, the darkness just the other side of everyday life - all human life in a box of matches.
  • Published: 1 March 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099448389
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $26.99
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About the author

Nicholson Baker

Born in 1957 Nicholson Baker is the author of several acclaimed novels; A Box of Matches, Vox and The Fermata as well as essays, including the campaigning Double Fold for which the New York Times called him 'the Erin Brokovich of the library world'.

Also by Nicholson Baker

Checkpoint
Double Fold
The Size Of Thoughts
The Fermata
See all

Praise for A Box of Matches

As Kipling was to the secrets of the jungle, so is Baker to modern domesticity, equally ready with fascinating observation

Daily Telegraph

Like the small, agreeable sensations it so deftly evokes, this modestly scaled story is a pleasure that can add cheer to an entire day

Spectator

There is a good deal more everyday wonder here than in a hundred original miscellanies

Observer

This might be Baker's best yet - you're in for a treat

Evening Standard

Extraordinary prose

Sunday Times