Smoothie

Tender, exuberant and deliciously dark, Claudine Toutoungi's debut collection evokes the surreal humor of Matthew Sweeney and the candor of Emily Berry, while remaining disarmingly fresh in its blend of desire and dislocation. Roaming from metropolis to sculpture park to remote coastal town, Smoothie charts the wayward wanderings of a compelling cast of misfits – hotel eavesdroppers, city interlopers, lone wolves, phantom bird-watchers, disaffected language robots and triumphant piano-swallowers – as they grapple with the urge to communicate whatever the cost. What stirs beneath language’s smooth surface frequently erupts in startling fashion, as the characters attempt to talk their way out of a peculiarly 21st-century state of disorientation. Riffing off loneliness, authenticity and heartbreak as they go, these are individuals lost and found in translation. Often in monologue, recalling the intimacy of Raymond Carver, the voices of Smoothie are at once urgent and soulful, and ultimately find redemption in their own linguistic energy.

Claudine Toutoungi grew up in Warwickshire and studied English and French at Trinity College, Oxford University. After a Master’s at Goldsmiths, she trained as an actor at LAMDA and worked as a BBC Radio Drama producer and English teacher. As a dramatist, her plays Bit Part and Slipping have been produced by The Stephen Joseph Theatre. She adapted Slipping for BBC Radio 4, after it was featured in a international reading series at New York’s Lark Play Development Centre. Other work for BBC Radio includes Deliverers and Home Front. She lives in Cambridge.