Seeds Of Greatness
  • Published: 2 July 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099492849
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $26.99

Seeds Of Greatness

Buy from…
The Nile Mighty Ape BookHub Whitcoulls The Warehouse Paper Plus Fishpond Book Hero Unity Books University Book Shop Find Local Retailers

A legendary comedy scriptwriter writes his first novel; the result: a comic classic.

'Funny, twisted, touching, funny, bitter and funny. It's also very funny' - Hugh Laurie.

Two friends grow up in a North London Jewish suburb. David is bright, parent-pleasing and obviously destined for great things. But somehow he ends up earning peanuts in a Suffolk bookshop while his devious and wayward friend Jack, becomes rich and famous as a TV chat-show host.

When Jack dies, his widow and publisher commission David to write his biography; after all, dependable David can be relied upon not to dish the dirt about the sex, the drugs and the women. David however soon realises that it's finally time he stopped doing what is expected of him. Instead he must write the true story of the forty year friendship that has dominated his life and then maybe he'll get Jack out of his system. But what David soon finds is that he can never be completely free of Jack...
  • Published: 2 July 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099492849
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $26.99
Categories:

About the author

Jon Canter

Jon Canter grew up in Golders Green. He studied law at Cambridge, where he was President of Footlights, before becoming a TV and radio scriptwriter. Among the comedians and comic actors he's worked with are Rowan Atkinson, Dawn French, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, Lenny Henry, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, Richard Wilson and Arabella Weir. He also writes comment pieces for the Guardian. His first novel, Seeds of Greatness, was published in 2006 and chosen to be a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. His second novel, A Short Gentleman, was published in 2008 and dramatised on Radio 4 in 2012, with Hugh Bonneville playing the central character, Robert Purcell QC. His third novel, Worth, came out in 2011.

Also by Jon Canter

Legal, Decent, Honest and Truthful: The Complete Series 1-3
Worth
A Short Gentleman
See all

Praise for Seeds Of Greatness

Canter explores with gentle acuity the oppositions in long term friendship, and delves humorously into the relationship between writer and subject

Observer

Jon Canter is a north London Woody Allen. I haven't laughed so much in years - and then I realised that I had felt and thought hard too

Carole Angier, Independent

The most impressive thing in this novel is the way it captures the nuances of the love hate relationship between two friends who have enjoyed contrasting fortunes...There will not be many more polished debuts in 2006. Canter has taken an old tale and retold it with admirable invention and freshness

David Robson, Sunday Telegraph

A wise cracking monologue... laugh-a-line funny but in the tradition of jewish humour, [it] touches a serious issue

John Sutherland, Financial Times

Well observed, warm humour... perfect parody

Andrew Collins, The Times

A very funny, intelligent novel about being a failure

Guardian

Funny, beautiful and strangely moving - stuffed full of belly laughs, but written from the heart

Tony Parsons

He is arguably the finest comic novelist working in Britain today. Indeed, he may just be finest comic anything working in Britain right now... Canter's prose is achingly funny...it is also vital, acute, literary and oddly moving.

James Kidd, Independent