This is the second gruesome volume in the Milrose Munce saga. The first, Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help, was on the Financial Times bestseller list, and was named a "2008 Book of the Year" by Lovereading4kids in the UK. It was also #1 on both the Children's and Teen bestseller lists on Amazon, and received all sorts of pleasant reviews from newspapers and magazines around the world.
All schools have ghosts, of course, but the school attended by Milrose Munce, our sarcastic hero, is unusual by virtue of the sheer number of disgusting ghouls that waft cheerfully through its halls. These phantoms -- most of them Milrose's close friends -- have thus far been assaulted by a world-class exorcist, and it is difficult to imagine things getting much worse. After all, the new Home Economics teacher is a benevolent warlock of no little renown, and he specializes in humiliating world-class exorcists.
Unfortunately, his skills are not well suited to the latest assault on the school: a conspiracy of shady students bent on creating loathsome and voracious forms of magical plant life rarely witnessed in even the scariest gardens.
These plants -- which are reasonably intelligent and repulsively large -- tend to separate happy couples, either by devouring one party, or by turning the other party into something mossy and indigestible. Milrose and his beloved, the exquisitely pretentious Arabella, are chief among the couples threatened in this way.
As if this isn't vile enough, rumors of something even more powerful and grotesque begin to filter down into the unhappy school: somebody, or something, is determined to resurrect the monstrous Corpse Flower.
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REVIEWS OF MILROSE MUNCE AND THE DEN OF PROFESSIONAL HELP
“Appealing to the misfit in all of us, Milrose Munce is a grand, gigglesome read.” - The Financial Times (London)
“One of the funniest books I've read this year.” - Sowetan (South Africa)
“Readers who enjoyed such books as A Series of Unfortunate Events or the Pure Dead books by Debi Gliori will love this.” - Back to Books
“Magnificent ... Rapid-fire repartee, puns, and wordplay grace almost every page.” - Books in Canada
“This brims with knowing and sly humor.” - Literary Review (London)
“Absolutely flawless. A cunningly subversive young-adult novel from one of the only living writers of English who knows how to craft a sentence.” - Joseph Suglia, author of Watch Out
“An incredibly unique, quirky and snot-pop-out-my-nose-hilarious book! ... Simply brilliant.” - Relishmagazine.com
“Twisted.” - The Magazine
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REVIEWS OF COOPER'S ADULT FICTION (AMNESIA and DELIRIUM)
“(AMNESIA's) elliptical narrative style recalls works by D.M. Thomas, Paul Auster, Sam Shepard and Vladimir Nabokov.... One gradually comes to appreciate Mr. Cooper's copious gifts: his ability to manufacture odd, cinematic images; his talent for creating a musically patterned narrative out of repeated symbols and motifs; his willingness to tackle ambitious intellectual themes. ” - Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times
“Douglas Cooper's AMNESIA is a compelling, obsessive nightmare of a debut novel -- Catcher in the Rye for a darker, more cynical age.” - The Austin Chronicle
“(AMNESIA's) ritual style with its overt symbolism recalls the haunting incantations of Jean Genet. Cooper handles narrative symbolism even better than Margaret Atwood. His musing speculation invokes Beckett. ” - The Toronto Star
“Douglas Cooper's DELIRIUM is beautiful and frightening -- the most transfixing novel I've read in the last two years. ” - Mikal Gilmore (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Shot in the Heart)
All schools have ghosts, of course, but the school attended by Milrose Munce, our sarcastic hero, is unusual by virtue of the sheer number of disgusting ghouls that waft cheerfully through its halls. These phantoms -- most of them Milrose's close friends -- have thus far been assaulted by a world-class exorcist, and it is difficult to imagine things getting much worse. After all, the new Home Economics teacher is a benevolent warlock of no little renown, and he specializes in humiliating world-class exorcists.
Unfortunately, his skills are not well suited to the latest assault on the school: a conspiracy of shady students bent on creating loathsome and voracious forms of magical plant life rarely witnessed in even the scariest gardens.
These plants -- which are reasonably intelligent and repulsively large -- tend to separate happy couples, either by devouring one party, or by turning the other party into something mossy and indigestible. Milrose and his beloved, the exquisitely pretentious Arabella, are chief among the couples threatened in this way.
As if this isn't vile enough, rumors of something even more powerful and grotesque begin to filter down into the unhappy school: somebody, or something, is determined to resurrect the monstrous Corpse Flower.
__________________________________________________________
REVIEWS OF MILROSE MUNCE AND THE DEN OF PROFESSIONAL HELP
“Appealing to the misfit in all of us, Milrose Munce is a grand, gigglesome read.” - The Financial Times (London)
“One of the funniest books I've read this year.” - Sowetan (South Africa)
“Readers who enjoyed such books as A Series of Unfortunate Events or the Pure Dead books by Debi Gliori will love this.” - Back to Books
“Magnificent ... Rapid-fire repartee, puns, and wordplay grace almost every page.” - Books in Canada
“This brims with knowing and sly humor.” - Literary Review (London)
“Absolutely flawless. A cunningly subversive young-adult novel from one of the only living writers of English who knows how to craft a sentence.” - Joseph Suglia, author of Watch Out
“An incredibly unique, quirky and snot-pop-out-my-nose-hilarious book! ... Simply brilliant.” - Relishmagazine.com
“Twisted.” - The Magazine
_______________________________________________________
REVIEWS OF COOPER'S ADULT FICTION (AMNESIA and DELIRIUM)
“(AMNESIA's) elliptical narrative style recalls works by D.M. Thomas, Paul Auster, Sam Shepard and Vladimir Nabokov.... One gradually comes to appreciate Mr. Cooper's copious gifts: his ability to manufacture odd, cinematic images; his talent for creating a musically patterned narrative out of repeated symbols and motifs; his willingness to tackle ambitious intellectual themes. ” - Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times
“Douglas Cooper's AMNESIA is a compelling, obsessive nightmare of a debut novel -- Catcher in the Rye for a darker, more cynical age.” - The Austin Chronicle
“(AMNESIA's) ritual style with its overt symbolism recalls the haunting incantations of Jean Genet. Cooper handles narrative symbolism even better than Margaret Atwood. His musing speculation invokes Beckett. ” - The Toronto Star
“Douglas Cooper's DELIRIUM is beautiful and frightening -- the most transfixing novel I've read in the last two years. ” - Mikal Gilmore (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Shot in the Heart)
