> Skip to content
  • Published: 15 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781407075327
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

Worth





‘An acute and very funny novel about the perils of rural life’ - Daily Mail

Worth is a fast-paced and touching comedy about how escaping the rat-race isn't all it's cracked up to be.

For Richard and Sarah, leaving the rat-race of London for the sleepy village of Worth feels like a dream come true. But their new life isn’t quite as idyllic as it first seems. The cottage is tiny and the neighbours are excruciating. Soon they find themselves reverse-commuting back to London on the weekends, just to be with people they like. Then Catherine moves in next door. Smart, sophisticated, beautiful Catherine seems like the answer to their prayers. But will their new best friend turn out to be their enemy?

  • Published: 15 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781407075327
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

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

See all

Praise for Worth

A darkly comic read that's perfect for anyone considering chucking in city life and starting afresh

Sport Magazine

Acute, horrifying and entertaining

The Lady

As an advertisement for either urban or rural living among self-satisfied characters, Worth is a toe-curling horror story; as a cheeky and well-directed poke in said characters' eyes, it's a winner

Independent on Sunday

Brilliantly good - so precise and well-observed and witty, and also one of the few books I've ever read that manages to be both tense and funny

Craig Brown

Canter is a sharp writer with a wickedly dry wit

Metro

Canter is a sympathetic writer and one with a keen eye and ear for the absurd. There are sentences on almost every page which raise a smile

Scotsman

He is arguably the finest comic novelist working in Britain today. Indeed, he may just be the 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

Hilarious... Smart, confident and, in places, eye wateringly upfront

Elizabeth Buchan, Sunday Times

Hilarious…every page contains a joke

Christopher Hirst, Independent

It's set in my favourite place (Suffolk) and I opened it at random, read a page and laughed

Julie Myerson, Daily Telegraph

Jon Canter is a North London Woody Allen

Independent

Jon Canter is hilarious and self-deprecating, a wonderful, wise and witty writer

Helen Fielding

Metropolitan media types transplanted to Suffolk provides fertile ground for Canter’s third hilarious novel…every page contains a joke

Christopher Hirst, Independent

Powered by Jon Canter's sharp and original wit and his constantly fizzing prose...an acute and very funny novel about the perils of rural life and of falling a little bit in love with your next-door neighbour

Daily Mail

The author's comic take on the gap between his characters' aspirations and their shortfall makes for hilarious, snappy reading... A sermon on the perils of the rural dream, it will have estate agents blanching. But as a robust and sharp piece of fiction, it is smart, confident and, in places, eye wateringly upfront

Elizabeth Buchan, Sunday Times

With shades of Mike Leigh's Another Year, it's a consistently funny skewering of middle-class clichés with memorable characters and a dark twist

Shortlist