'Brilliant and very expressive. Mal is an extremely vivid firework of a character.' - Greg Eden, Waterstones.co.uk

About the Author

David Whitehouse was born in 1981. His journalism has appeared in the Guardian, the Sunday Times, the Independent, Esquire, Time Out, and the Observer Magazine.

His first short film, 'The Archivist', produced by Warp Films and the BBC, opened the BBC Electric Proms in 2008 and screened at film festivals including Seattle and Munich.

Bed is his first novel. It was the inaugural winner of the To Hell with Prizes award in 2010.

Reviews

Hilarious and tragic; a perfectly brilliant debut.
* * Times * *

The best new novel I've read in ages.
* * Guardian * *

Bed is a deftly-told wonder. Mr. Whitehouse's writing is accomplished, poetic, and deeply affecting.
*Joe Meno, author of Hairstyles of the Damned*

David Whitehouse has taken what might be a gimmicky hook in a lesser writer's hands--a romance triangulating around a bedridden media spectacle, the world's most obese man--and turned it, through lapidary prose, into a soulful meditation on a fraternal love as singular as it is universal.
* * Teddy Wayne, author of KAPITOIL * *

Stunning.
* * GQ * *

Masterful . . . This accomplished debut offers an offbeat insight into the lives of a family dealing with morbid obesity... [Whitehouse] maintains a tone of subtlety and grace, pulling a distinguished and accessible story out of a profoundly strange experience.
* * Publishers Weekly * *

Brilliant and very expressive. Mal is an extremely vivid firework of a character.
* * Waterstones.co.uk * *

Hilarious and tragic; a perfectly brilliant debut.
* * Times * *

David Whitehouse's debut novel Bed will not be published by Canongate until next month, but it is already getting impressive advance press, with Grazia magazine naming it as its "number one summer read." Coincidentally, Whitehouse is the assistant editor of heat, published by Bauer Media from an office just one floor away from Grazia.
* * Private Eye * *

You will be up all night reading it!
* * Fabulous Magazine, News of the World * *

David Whitehouse has caught, through a debut novel that is as soulful as it is funny, the claustrophobia, tenderness, jealous resentment and horror of living under the same roof as your parents... Bed is a satisfyingly complex meditation on what it means to need and be needed . . . moving, inspired . . . left me looking forward to whatever he's going to write next.
* * Guardian * *

...the talk of the town.
* * Independent on Sunday * *

Sad and funny and pretty brilliant, too.
* * Observer Magazine * *

[Mal is] an extremely vivid firework of a character.
* * Independent * *

Mal is astonishing.
* * Scotsman * *

A totally extraordinary and original novel.
* * Heat Magazine * *

A novel that is as soulful as it is funny.
* * Guardian * *

Highly inventive and full of compassion.
* * Sunday Herald * *

Blends hilarity and tenderness perfectly.
* * Psychologies * *

An inventive, funny take on dysfunctional families.
* * Grazia * *

Strikes the perfect balance between clear, page-flipping storytelling and prose festooned with fresh, richly evocative imagery.
* * Time Out * *

A coming-of-age story like no other . . . nchanting, funny, surreal and heart-warming, David Whitehouse's novel presents one of the most thrilling and unique voices to emerge from Britain in years.
* * Western Mail * *

A complicated, loving, bizarre and occasionally stomach-churning story told with humour and affection.
* * Bella * *

Mesmerising.
* * Closer * *

Skilfully crafted ... will keep readers intrigued to the end.
* * We Love This Book Magazine * *

One of the most original and exciting novels we've read in ages. And we're not just saying that because the writer works for us.
* * Heat Magazine * *

A totally extraordinary and original novel
* * Heat * *

A serious contender for weirdest novel of the year so far
* * Stirling Observer * *

A novel about family love... the ways it can both beat you down and hold you up... A real achievement
* * Stirling Observer * *

highly inventive and full of compassion
* * The Sunday Herald * *

A masterful balance of displaced emotion, black humor, and reportage, this accomplished debut offers an offbeat insight into the lives of a family dealing with morbid obesity. Malcolm "Mal" Ede is the ultimate nonconformist, and, on his 25th birthday, he decides to go to bed and stay there-forever. His increasingly newsworthy protest of the idea of "a mediocre existence" of work, bills, marriage, and kids, and his slide into stasis-induced gross obesity is told from the point of view of his unnamed younger brother, who treats readers to a glimpse of the lives that are touched by the enigmatic Mal. In each of the members of Mal's immediate family, his avoidance of life is reflected-his mother, who thrives on martyrdom; his engineer father, who carries with him guilt for a fatal mining disaster; and his brother, stoic in every regard except his unrequited love for Mal's girlfriend, Lou. The central question of the novel is "why?" asked by the journalists who call for interviews, the gawkers who camp out on the lawn, and by those closest to Mal. Whitehouse deals with material that threatens to tip into the overwrought or clownish, but he maintains a tone of subtlety and grace, pulling a distinguished and accessible story out of a profoundly strange experience. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Weighing in at more than half a ton, the fattest man on the planet, Mal Ede, has not left his bed for 20 years. The bed has actually grown proportionately larger as he has-now two king-sized beds and a single strapped together to contain him. The bedroom, too, has been enlarged along the way, sending his parents out into a trailer in the driveway. His overindulgent mother keeps him fed and functioning with the help of an elaborate network of medical equipment, while his bewildered father and dutiful brother keep the press and the curious public at bay. Forsaking his devoted girlfriend, Lou, Mal lives only to eat and sleep. VERDICT From a mildly eccentric youth in which he preferred nudity to clothing to his existential crisis at 25, how and why Mal got into bed and stayed there for 20 years is the mystery at the heart of this strange but beguiling tale. Its short, punchy chapters propel the story along to a satisfying conclusion. For most public libraries.-Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Kingston, Ont. (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.