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112th out of 274 books
—
58 voters
Gents
Gents is a touching and brilliantly funny exploration of a clash of cultures and morals set in the underground world of a men's public urinal.Ezekiel Murphy, a black West Indian immigrant, takes up a new job as an attendant in a large London lavatory. The supervisor, Josiah Reynolds, and another West Indian, Jason, explain to him that one of the main problems they face is...more
Paperback, 176 pages
Published
September 1st 2007
by The Friday Project
(first published 1997)
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Work as a subject is sorely neglected by fiction; few writers, with the notable exception of Magnus Mills who does almost nothing else, draw inspiration from the mundane tasks we perform or have performed for us on a daily basis. Gents, though, describes with lyricism and precision the working lives of the three men running a municipal public lavatory in London. The men, all three originally from Jamaica, have different attitudes to the use of the place by cruising homosexuals – or, as they refe...more
Meet Ezekiel Murphy.
Needing work, he takes a job working as a toilet attendant at a men’s washroom in the London Underground. Working with two other men, Reynolds and Jason, he figures this will be just one more run of the mill job.
He is mistaken.
One day while cleaning the bathroom, he watches as two men leave a cubicle together. Another time, he watches as someone kneels on the ground while the other man stays standing.
Appalled, he asks Reynolds and Jason what is going on. “It’s the reptiles.”...more
Needing work, he takes a job working as a toilet attendant at a men’s washroom in the London Underground. Working with two other men, Reynolds and Jason, he figures this will be just one more run of the mill job.
He is mistaken.
One day while cleaning the bathroom, he watches as two men leave a cubicle together. Another time, he watches as someone kneels on the ground while the other man stays standing.
Appalled, he asks Reynolds and Jason what is going on. “It’s the reptiles.”...more
My advice to you would be to not read this book....until you are able to treat yourself to a slice of time which will allow you the luxury of reading it from cover to cover in one sitting.
The main characters in this book reach out from the pages to welcome you into their world. The dialogue is exquisite, crafted in such a way that it burns into your mind. It left me incapable of putting the book down for more than a few minutes without burning with desire to find out what happened next.
Between...more
The main characters in this book reach out from the pages to welcome you into their world. The dialogue is exquisite, crafted in such a way that it burns into your mind. It left me incapable of putting the book down for more than a few minutes without burning with desire to find out what happened next.
Between...more
Un tema que de otra forma no sería fácil conocer a fondo; Collins trabaja para publicar este libro con respeto y de una manera inteligente y moral.
Son 3 personajes perfectamente definidos: Ezekiel Murphy, Reynolds y Jason. Los tres jamaicanos y heterosexuales. Sortean con buen humor las dificultades de la vida y de su trabajo como intendentes de un baño Londinense para hombres, que ya contaba con cierta fama de encuentros homosexuales. La historia se centra en estos baños, en las historias que...more
Son 3 personajes perfectamente definidos: Ezekiel Murphy, Reynolds y Jason. Los tres jamaicanos y heterosexuales. Sortean con buen humor las dificultades de la vida y de su trabajo como intendentes de un baño Londinense para hombres, que ya contaba con cierta fama de encuentros homosexuales. La historia se centra en estos baños, en las historias que...more
I enjoyed this unexpected little tale of goings-on in a men's public toilets in London. The story follows middle-aged Ez as he starts work alongside two other Jamaican-born Londoners cleaning the Gents'. The innocent Ez cannot imagine what can be going on when he spots two men leaving the same cubicle. He is enlightened by his workmates but soon they are having to take action because the Council is embarrassed by the place being such a well-known venue for 'cottaging' and is threatening with clo...more
Every now and then, you read a book that takes you completely unawares, challenges what you think, and completely surprises you in the pure joy of it, and this is such a book! If I hadn't been given this book to read, I don't think I ever would have, I'd have read the blurb, decided it really wasn't for me, and passed on by! However, friends passed it on, and several comments suggested that they had all read the blurb and thought the same thing, but thoroughly enjoyed it, so on that recommendati...more
2 likes · like · see review
Gents is a short novel and easy to read. The writing is fluid and straight forward and the characters are believable, although their development is limited due to the length of the book.
The plot is a more a vehicle to the delivery of the moral than anything else. A man begins working in a public urinal and is shocked to find it is used for casual sex. At first the book seems to have very judgmental, almost intolerant overtones. It is worth progressing with to see how the interaction of the chara...more
The plot is a more a vehicle to the delivery of the moral than anything else. A man begins working in a public urinal and is shocked to find it is used for casual sex. At first the book seems to have very judgmental, almost intolerant overtones. It is worth progressing with to see how the interaction of the chara...more
Nov 23, 2011
Frank Hestvik
rated it
1 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
novel,
third-person,
read-physical-book,
male-author,
male-protagonist,
fiction,
british,
short
I didn't like this book.
I read a Norwegian translation and I thought the language pretty tepid. It switches from objective to subjective third person sometimes, seemingly by a mistake. The protagonist is like a vapid ghost drifting through the story. The other two main characters also seem pretty empty. Maybe if it was longer...? It was a fast read though, and I got it for free.
The main source of conflict are gays and them doing horrible, unchristian things in the public bathroom where most of t...more
I read a Norwegian translation and I thought the language pretty tepid. It switches from objective to subjective third person sometimes, seemingly by a mistake. The protagonist is like a vapid ghost drifting through the story. The other two main characters also seem pretty empty. Maybe if it was longer...? It was a fast read though, and I got it for free.
The main source of conflict are gays and them doing horrible, unchristian things in the public bathroom where most of t...more
Sep 16, 2012
Megan Reddaway
added it
I was disappointed with this. I thought it was going to be funny at the beginning but it became quite homophobic. It's about three staff of a London men's public toilets who are told by the Council that they have to reduce the amount of cottaging that goes on. The men having sex in cubicles are chased out with sticks and are referred to as 'reptiles' by all three staff, including the MC who is otherwise a sweet and sympathetic character. It's suggested that the cottaging men are not gay which I...more
This is a short tale in what might seem an unsalubrious setting, but it's a small gem of a book that's well worth reading. It was first published in 1997, but went out of print, before being republished in 2007 by The Friday Project. The republication is well deserved.[return][return]Gents is the tale of Ezekiel Murphy, a West Indian immigrant, and the job he takes as an attendant in a public lavatory in London. The supervisor, Josiah Reynolds, and the other cleaner, Jason, teach him the job, wh...more
Short book about 3 West Indians working in a London underground convenience. Quite a quick and enjoyable read with the main moral dilemma surrounding 'cottagers' causing problems for the council and also for the 3 Jamaican workers. Ingenious denouement to this problem but also as a sideline it looks at the morality of one of the main protagonists who is a rastafarian who can not 'keep it in his pants' and has two wives - I felt as though this could have been looked at more but I suppose it was i...more
A quick, enjoyable read.
This took me under two hours to read, but they were two highly enjoyable hours.
Beautifully written with humour and wit, this book relates the dilemma of a gents public toilet in London; if the toilet attendants clear the facility of the unsavoury element ("reptiles"), the place becomes uneconomical.
I loved the Jamaican characters, all three of them beautifully drawn, and the way they cleaned the place so thouroughly that it didn't feel like an unsavoury setting at all!
Thi...more
This took me under two hours to read, but they were two highly enjoyable hours.
Beautifully written with humour and wit, this book relates the dilemma of a gents public toilet in London; if the toilet attendants clear the facility of the unsavoury element ("reptiles"), the place becomes uneconomical.
I loved the Jamaican characters, all three of them beautifully drawn, and the way they cleaned the place so thouroughly that it didn't feel like an unsavoury setting at all!
Thi...more
A book set in the gents' toilets at a a London underground station. The main character Ez has just begun working there and is shocked by why there are 2 men coming out of the same cubicle. His 2 co-workers Reynolds and Jason explain to him about it and what they have to do about it. A very short but well written book told with plenty of humour.
I really didn't know what to expects from Gents, and found its simple set up of three main characters and their lives which centred on running a Gents toilet and some of the savoury and less savoury things that go on very easy to read and enjoyable. It's not a book that blew me away but was good because it was different and very straight forward. As I think someone else has written in a review I read somewhere, a bit like Magnus Mills but without the sparkle.
A quick read. Three West Indian men look after a gents' toilet in London, and, at the behest of the local council, try to rid it of the cottagers who frequent it. However, their success brings a drop in profits for the toilet, and they have some difficult decisions to make. This book taught me more about urinals than I ever wanted to know.
A real gem, this book, wise and thought-provoking and tender and definitely unusual. Quite subversive too. Very well written and definitely deserves to be better known.
I am so pleased that I was lent this little book as I am sure I would never have chosen it otherwise.
Different. Not a book I would normally read. I liked the characters but who ever would have chosen this storyline is beyond me.
Oct 17, 2012
Lindsay (Little Reader Library)
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
contemporary-fiction
Clever, surprising, compact but very satisfying read.
This is a travelling book!
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http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/1...
Prevedena kao: MUŠKI ZAHOD
Ova tanka knjižica bila je pravo iznenađenje i (unatoč svom naslovu) osvježenje. U njoj se ne krije nikakva dubokoumna filozofija koja mijenja život, radnja joj je posve mundana, ali svejedno u sebi ima ono nešto. Simpatična na neki posve svakodnevni način.
Ova tanka knjižica bila je pravo iznenađenje i (unatoč svom naslovu) osvježenje. U njoj se ne krije nikakva dubokoumna filozofija koja mijenja život, radnja joj je posve mundana, ali svejedno u sebi ima ono nešto. Simpatična na neki posve svakodnevni način.
A quick, light read. I was expecting this book to be a bit more original but actually found it quite dull and forgettable.
Aug 02, 2011
Kate
added it
Short and to the point but not the most exciting book I've read. It took less than an hour to get through.
May 08, 2013
Louise
marked it as to-read
Apr 03, 2013
Azza A.
marked it as to-read
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Incidentally, I've only read All Quiet on the Orient Express by Magnus Mills, and didn...more
Nov 16, 2007 12:31pm