The Lynne Truss Treasury: Columns and Three Comic Novels

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Lynne Truss debuted in America as a guffaw-inducing grammarian, but her Britishaudience has known her for years as a critically acclaimed novelist and columnist. Her previous works are now available stateside in one volume, complete with a new preface.

With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed, a raucous comedy of errors, follows the exploits of Osborne Lonsdale, who writes a weekly column called "Me and My Shed" for a floundering gardening magazine. When the publication is taken over by a gung-ho management team, Lonsdale must learn to cope with his new coworkers.

In Tennyson's Gift and Going Loco, Truss turns a fiendishly clever eye to the literary world. Tennyson's Gift is an imaginative cocktail of Victorian seriousness and farce that re-imagines the world of the nineteenth-century English poet laureate, placing him in the midst of eccentric company that includes dodgy Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll). Going Loco features a critic trying to write a definitive account of the doppelg�nger in gothic fiction, amidst the chaos of her domestic life, including paranoia that her cleaning lady is taking over her life.

Making the Cat Laugh is a riotous collection of columns about single life. Truss comments on dating, secondhand smoking, shopping, holidays, and people who ask, "How's the novel going?" All the while, she continues an eighteen-year quest to make her cat laugh. Reportedly, the feline remains unimpressed.

A feast of wit, The Lynne Truss Treasury will delight fans of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Praise for Lynne Truss and her work:

With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed
Lynne Truss has written a perfect comic novel at the first attempt a witty, ingenious romp.
Daily Telegraph

This book will become a perennial comic delight this Truss must never be stopped.
Sue Limb

Sex, violence, murder and psychoanalysis lurk in the garden shed - a breezy, rude, pleasurable alternative to cutting the grass.
Obeserver

Making the Cat Laugh
A small masterpiece of comedy...with abundant close observation, the familiar is made fresh...A continual hoot.
The Times

A truly inventive comic writer ... You should not attempt to read Making the Cat Laugh while travelling on public transport
The Irish Times

[Lynne Truss is] a social humorist of sharp insight and startling candour.
Scotland on Sunday

Tennyson s Gift
A comic novel of subtle distinction ... richly entertaining and at times very moving.
The Times

The perfect summer book. No deck-chair will be complete without it.
The Independent

Terrific...Tennyson's Gift is witty, surprising, oddly compassionate and hugely assured.
The Sunday Times

Going Loco
Truss lets her imagination explode in what can only be described as a riddle devised while coming down of hallucinogens.
Time Out

A classic comic novel, unashamed, exuberant, fiendishly clever, and a joy to read.
The Daily Telegraph

Going Loco is wonderfully underplayed, unpredictable and unexpectedly sinister.
Sunday Express

Author Bio: Lynne Truss is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, which has sold nearly one million copies and won Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. A novelist and journalist, she is also the author of numerous radio comedy dramas and for many years served as a television critic and sports columnist for The Times (London).

656 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,2005

About the author

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Lynne Truss is a writer and journalist who started out as a literary editor with a blue pencil and then got sidetracked. The author of three novels and numerous radio comedy dramas, she spent six years as the television critic of The Times of London, followed by four (rather peculiar) years as a sports columnist for the same newspaper. She won Columnist of the Year for her work for Women's Journal. Lynne Truss also hosted Cutting a Dash, a popular BBC Radio 4 series about punctuation. She now reviews books for the Sunday Times of London and is a familiar voice on BBC Radio 4. She lives in Brighton, England.

Community Reviews

Rating(4.2 / 5.0, 25 votes)
5 stars
10(40%)
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25 reviews All reviews
April 26,2025
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Average of 3.5 / I suspect those who enjoyed _Eats, Shoots & Leaves_ will like the _Making the Cat Laugh_ collection of columns. The same language and sense of wit and fun are also in the comic novels, but at times too ridiculous.

Enjoyed most: _Tennyson's Gift_, and several of columns of in _Making the Cat Laugh_
April 26,2025
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There are three novels in this book, and a collection of articles. The first novel had me snorting laughing, snickering, and just enjoying it. I tried starting the second, and it followed almost exactly the same format (to me, anyway) as the second novel. So I skipped ahead to the articles and once again found myself laughing hard. My favorite part of one of her columns was when she describes sitting with a boyfriend and suddenly looking at him and saying, "Why aren't you a pony?" That's just about the awesomest thing I've ever read. I've finished the columns, and I *might* give the third novel a shot. And maybe not.
April 26,2025
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It's been on the shelf for years...and I've even opened it...and yet it has not yet been read.
April 26,2025
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Have only read two of the novels, but am completely hooked. The first one "Seed Packets" was hilarious. I stayed up until 4am to get to the end. The action's pace was ridiculously crazy, and the situations near impossible; yet, seemingly realistic given the characters.
April 26,2025
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OK I may say I "read" this book, but honestly, I couldn't finish it. I could barely get through the first comic novel and I didn't have the stamina to finish. Maybe it was just the topic of the novel (a man who works part-time at a magazine about sheds and the "hilarity" which ensues after a mixup of shed interviews) or the disjointed character development, but I found myself shaking my head and wondering what happened to the Lynne Truss I knew and loved? Sadly, I think her writing is only witty and funny when she is commenting on life experiences instead of attempting to create humor where there is none. Truss should stick to non-fiction, or at least stop touting her fiction as "comic".
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