Overview
When Robert (or Kidder, as his best friend calls him) decides to impress at a job interview by making up a son, he discovers that maintaining the lie is far harder than he thought – so he invents a story that ‘Brodie’ has been kidnapped. After all, it’s not like they’re going to find the fake boy.
But a few weeks later, Kidder receives a call to collect his non-existent son from the police station – a boy who looks exactly like the picture he photoshopped…
A darkly humorous, genre-bending work of literary sci-fi. Lynda Clark is a new talent to discover for lovers of Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Coupland.
Reviews
"This is a remarkable debut, written with great warmth and wit. By turns devastating and hilarious, Lynda Clark's Beyond Kidding had me from the very start, and it didn't let me go." —Sarah Jackson, author, Pelt
"A dark and quirky debut—funny, sad, thought-provoking and unexpected." —Emma D'Costa, Commonwealth Writers
"A dark and quirky debut – funny, sad, thought-provoking and unexpected." —Emma D'Costa,
Commonwealth Writers"This is a remarkable debut, written with great warmth and wit. By turns devastating and hilarious, Lynda Clark’s
Beyond Kidding had me from the very start, and it didn’t let me go." —Sarah Jackson, author of
Pelt and winner of the Seamus Heaney Prize 2013
"
Beyond Kidding will make you laugh, it might make you shed a little tear and it’ll almost certainly make you stop and think. At the very least it’s a bold and confident debut, wittily-written, well-observed and full of surprises." —Paul Mount,
Starburst MagazineAuthor Biography
Lynda Clark graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a BA in English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing. She has completed a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing. In 2015 she won the BBC Award at the WriterSlam, and the Canada and Europe region Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2017. Lynda previously worked as a writer and producer for a video game company where she created in-game dialogue and marketing copy. She was also a bookseller at Waterstones Nottingham and will shortly be joining the University of Dundee as a Research Fellow in Narrative and Play.