Edward Docx’s second novel, Self Help, which appeared on this year’s Booker longlist, is about the Glovers, an Anglo-Russian family. Twins Gabriel and Isabella are thirty-two and, while intelligent, are trapped in unsatisfactory jobs. Isabella works in New York for a media agency, while Gabriel, based in London, edits Self-Help!, a fatuous magazine for the depressed. They are estranged from their father, Nicholas, a gifted, idle bully who inherited massively and now lives in Paris with his fine art and his catamite, Alessandro. 

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