Pillow Man
  • Published: 15 August 2015
  • ISBN: 9780224099813
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $55.00

Pillow Man

Formats & editions
EBook
6 Aug 2015
Hardback
15 Aug 2015
Buy from…
The Nile Mighty Ape BookHub Whitcoulls The Warehouse Paper Plus Fishpond
Find local retailers

An odd romance that begins among the Egyptian cotton sheets and goosedown pillows of an Oxford Street department store

William has a good, steady job in retail. He works in the bedlinen department of an Oxford Street store. He knows everything there is to know about comfy.

Lucy has a portfolio career which, in her view, is no kind of career at all. Her life is a mess, her love life even more unsatisfactory than that. She wouldn’t be comfortable if she sat on a sofa in Heal’s. Unable to sleep, she thinks a new pillow might be the answer.

William and Lucy are not connected. Yet the pair of them share a terrible memory from the past, the sort of joint recollection that changes with the light, depending on who you were and where you were standing at the time.

The question is: what to do with it?

Pillow Man is a London novel of our uneasy times. It has love in it and darkness. It sets lonely tunes to a broken backbeat. It marries life to death. Crucially, it explores the difficult metaphysics of bedtime.

What, after all, do we really mean by ‘thread-count’?
  • Published: 15 August 2015
  • ISBN: 9780224099813
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Nick Coleman

Following a brief spell as a stringer at NME in the mid-1980s, Nick Coleman was Music Editor of Time Out for seven years, then Arts and Features Editor at the Independent and the Independent on Sunday. He has also written on music for The Times, Guardian, Telegraph, New Statesman, Intelligent Life, GQ and The Wire. He is the author of The Train in the Night, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Wellcome Book Prize.

portrait photo of Nick Coleman

Also by Nick Coleman

The Train in the Night
Voices
See all

Praise for Pillow Man

Full of melancholy wit, it’s sure to beguile fans of Nick Hornby.

Hephzibah Anderson, Mail on Sunday

A quirky, well-written romance cum mystery tale.

Sebastian Shakespeare, Tatler

Coleman imbues his writing with a dry wit that enlivens the everyday, and with pithy character descriptions.

Independent on Sunday

Sharp, witty and beautifully written, it only takes moments to fall head first into the beautiful style of Pillow Man.

We Love This Book

A tender, thoughtful first novel about love, death - and the appeal of fresh, crisp Egyptian cotton bed sheets.

Daily Mail

Nick Coleman makes his fiction debut with an enjoyably offbeat romance set in modern London

4 stars, Metro

It's a beautifully written, thoroughly modern and witty exploration of love, relationships and getting older, with no sign of cheesiness or sentimentality.

UK Press Syndication

Nick Coleman has a wonderful feel for the sights, sounds and stenches of modern London, and an extraordinary talent for making prosaic things poetic.

Kate Saunders, Saga Magazine

A raw account of the male emotional landscape.

Liza Hoggard, Independent