Uncle Dysfunctional

Uncompromising Answers to Life's Most Painful Problems

By: AA Gill

Narrated by: Alexander Armstrong

From 2011 up until his death at the end of 2016, the inimitable AA Gill reigned supreme as Uncle Dysfunctional, Esquire's resident advice columnist. In this raffish, hilarious, scathing yet often surprisingly humane collection, Gill applies his unmatched wit to the largest and smallest issues of our time. Whether you're struggling to satisfy your other half, having a crisis over your baldness, don't like your daughter's boyfriend or need the definitive rules on shorts, leather jackets and man-bags, AA Gill has all the answers - but you'd better brace yourself first.

©2017 AA Gill (P)2017 Audible, Ltd

Critic reviews

"Uncle Dysfunctional is worldly, all-knowing utterly hilarious and absolutely the last fucking person I'd go to for advice about anything." (Giles Coren)

"Read, wince...laugh until you rupture yourself." (Will Self)

"Gill is a wit and a charmer. Even when he's wrong, he's superbly full of himself." (Lynn Barber)

"He was the best writer. Nobody even came close." (India Knight)

"He never once produced a boring sentence or a phrase that did not shine." (John Witherow)

This book is really funny!

AA Gill understood his literary brilliance and could be understatedly modest about it. He is utterly original at each step, moralistic, offensive to those who are too comfortable and actively comforting those at the butt of an unjust offence. You don’t have to agree with a writer to admire them. Gill offended some people, and his writing is periodically offensive. Discarding his books and articles because it is regularly offensive is like saying you do not like a book because you find the plot disagreeable. He used offensiveness to frame issues and underscore peoples' morally absurd and selfish positions. At the same time, he recognized that he is guilty of the same offence. This book is a sample of responses of advice-seeking letters possed to him in the magazine Esquire. I was reading Esquire fifteen years before Gill wrote for the magazine, seeking advice and guidance in a much less complicated world. I the issues addressed (e.g., people who send naked photos before first dates, dressing like any given rapper) are mostly out of my ken. However, the human condition remains the same: dealing with heartbreak, sexual attraction, insignificance and meaninglessness.
Moreover, issues like anxieties associated with success are right on point. The writing is offensive, sensitive and moral - in a practical fashion. I would describe AA Gill as a post-modern St. Augustine able to confess, place all in perspective and move forward ... while ridiculing you for being a selfish and cruel idiot.