What do you think?
Rate this book
Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs
A rollicking debut novel set in a Scottish fast-food joint. Think Nick Hornby for the anti-globalization generation!
247 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2011
7 people are currently reading
178 people want to read
About the author
D.D. Johnston
4 books78 followersD.D. Johnston is a Scottish author, who now lives in Cheltenham, England, where he works as a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Gloucestershire. His first novel, Peace, Love, & Petrol Bombs (AK Press), was a Sunday Herald Books of the Year for 2011 and has been translated into Spanish as Paz, amor y cócteles molotov.
His second novel, The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub, was a 2013 book of the year in the Morning Star, where it was described as 'determinedly extraordinary.'
His third novel, The Secret Baby Room, is a tense psychological thriller:
"As her own life falls apart, Claire risks everything in her quest. It’s an investigation that leads her not only towards the dark knowledge of past crimes but towards an understanding of the damaged lives of those around her. Johnston offers us a wonderfully gripping read, but also a compassionate and moving story of people struggling to survive at the margins of a rapidly changing city." - Crime Culture
His second novel, The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub, was a 2013 book of the year in the Morning Star, where it was described as 'determinedly extraordinary.'
His third novel, The Secret Baby Room, is a tense psychological thriller:
"As her own life falls apart, Claire risks everything in her quest. It’s an investigation that leads her not only towards the dark knowledge of past crimes but towards an understanding of the damaged lives of those around her. Johnston offers us a wonderfully gripping read, but also a compassionate and moving story of people struggling to survive at the margins of a rapidly changing city." - Crime Culture
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 17, 2011
Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs follows the adventures of a young Scottish lad who, not content with his lot in life as a fast food worker, forms an underground union with his friends, gets politicised, takes part in some of the spectacular anti-capitalist actions of the turn of the millenium then has his life unravel as his optimism fades as the movement stumbles.
Shot through with deadpan humour, it's both hilarious and heart wrenching. It's a good document of a particular era, as the optimism of the anti-capitalism movement waxes off the back of the success of J18 & Seattle then begins to wane over the events in Genoa & 9/11. It's also unflinching in it's honest depiction of Scottish working class life, taking the fucking rough with the smooth, neither romanticising the proles nor indulging in Welsh-esque rubber-necking.
All in, a great a debut novel and will look forward to more books from D.D. Johnstone.
Shot through with deadpan humour, it's both hilarious and heart wrenching. It's a good document of a particular era, as the optimism of the anti-capitalism movement waxes off the back of the success of J18 & Seattle then begins to wane over the events in Genoa & 9/11. It's also unflinching in it's honest depiction of Scottish working class life, taking the fucking rough with the smooth, neither romanticising the proles nor indulging in Welsh-esque rubber-necking.
All in, a great a debut novel and will look forward to more books from D.D. Johnstone.
October 21, 2011
a tale of romance set to anarchists actions in Paris, Thessaloniki, Prague, London, (and Genoa via tv). Very nice try for a first novel with compelling scenes in Benny Burger, squats, bars, and the burning streets. author is a professor now in uk? (i'm not sure where gloucesterhshire is) and i look forward to more stories.
oh, and yes, there are petrol bombs here, but you ever notice there is way more burning, violence, aggressive head pounding, burning, shooting, destruction, human rights trampling, burning, and bombs when the cops show up, than when the cops don't show up?
oh, and yes, there are petrol bombs here, but you ever notice there is way more burning, violence, aggressive head pounding, burning, shooting, destruction, human rights trampling, burning, and bombs when the cops show up, than when the cops don't show up?
December 24, 2012
D D Johnston’s first novel is a spin on the classic bildungsroman that sees Scottish working class lad Wayne Foster transformed, via the trials both of Europe’s early 21st century anti-capitalist struggles and of mental illness from an angry but slightly out-of-place burger flipper into something yet to emerge but who we might well meet on a picket line (as we do, in a sense, on the picket line from time to time at the university where we both work).
Along the way, Wayne digs up turf in London’s Parliament Square as part of 2000 May Day protests, is tear-gassed in Thessaloniki and Prague during anti-G8 protests, falls in love and lust, forms a syndicalist union at his local burger bar, becomes a profound case of depression and generally lives a precarious life on the edge. Although the events may be different, it is an existence I suspect many activists on the left can recognise – and not just the anarchist left Johnston’s Wayne links up with.
Johnston has a sharp eye for the richness, excitement, worry and fear, dynamics and richness of an activist life, as well as for the paradoxes and ironies of the political and politicised lives around us. As well as this eye for complexity he has an enviable skill at parodying much of the discourse of the left, its density and at times downright absurdity – but for the most part its impenetrable dullness (most brilliantly in an, I hope, invented philosophical extract on pp 201-2). What is more, he also has an excellent eye for characterisation and surrounds Wayne with some superb figures as the story develops through a dialogue between the ordinary existence of small group of friends in their context of global political struggles – with just enough of a sense of the absurd for it to be both funny and tragic (but not a tragedy – it is, after all, a coming of age novel.
It didn’t grab me in the not-put-downable sense, but engaging, amusing and enlivening – a wee cracker of a story (as they might say, north of the border).
Along the way, Wayne digs up turf in London’s Parliament Square as part of 2000 May Day protests, is tear-gassed in Thessaloniki and Prague during anti-G8 protests, falls in love and lust, forms a syndicalist union at his local burger bar, becomes a profound case of depression and generally lives a precarious life on the edge. Although the events may be different, it is an existence I suspect many activists on the left can recognise – and not just the anarchist left Johnston’s Wayne links up with.
Johnston has a sharp eye for the richness, excitement, worry and fear, dynamics and richness of an activist life, as well as for the paradoxes and ironies of the political and politicised lives around us. As well as this eye for complexity he has an enviable skill at parodying much of the discourse of the left, its density and at times downright absurdity – but for the most part its impenetrable dullness (most brilliantly in an, I hope, invented philosophical extract on pp 201-2). What is more, he also has an excellent eye for characterisation and surrounds Wayne with some superb figures as the story develops through a dialogue between the ordinary existence of small group of friends in their context of global political struggles – with just enough of a sense of the absurd for it to be both funny and tragic (but not a tragedy – it is, after all, a coming of age novel.
It didn’t grab me in the not-put-downable sense, but engaging, amusing and enlivening – a wee cracker of a story (as they might say, north of the border).
September 9, 2011
this book is scottish, like really scottish, like the author doesn't know how to spell scottish.
it's great really really good. It captures the modern attempt to do "something" where in reality we aren't doing anything. we land at protests and sign petitions because that is how you are suppose to change the world not because that's how you do change the world. It taps into the ultimate aimlessness of modern protest, we don't know how we get from where we are to where we want to be so we mimic how we think people got their in the past, but without direction we end up back where we started.
It's a really well done piece.
don't read the back cover though there is way too much information on it.
it's great really really good. It captures the modern attempt to do "something" where in reality we aren't doing anything. we land at protests and sign petitions because that is how you are suppose to change the world not because that's how you do change the world. It taps into the ultimate aimlessness of modern protest, we don't know how we get from where we are to where we want to be so we mimic how we think people got their in the past, but without direction we end up back where we started.
It's a really well done piece.
don't read the back cover though there is way too much information on it.
March 11, 2022
Una historia entretenida con un contenido político e ideológico muy interesante.
October 6, 2011
This could almost be two books put together as one. The first is a funny uptake of what wage slavery is all about; the drudgery, the repetition and the petty line-managers. And how a bunch of modern day anarcho-syndicalists would try and deconstruct this. It seems books don't talk about work anymore for some reason, and unfortunately its the place we spend most of our lives.
For my money the book contains the best writing about what it feels to be political and involved in a movement you sometimes fail to take seriously yourself. In that sense it reminded me alot of Reasons to Be Cheerful.
The second half of the book is a detour into relationships and broken ambitions. Not a problem per se, but I had a hard time accepting the protagonists love interest - which was a damp squib and subsequently a down-turn for the second half of the book.
Its good that AK Press are releasing fiction and I would definitely follow this author up given how promising this was.
For my money the book contains the best writing about what it feels to be political and involved in a movement you sometimes fail to take seriously yourself. In that sense it reminded me alot of Reasons to Be Cheerful.
The second half of the book is a detour into relationships and broken ambitions. Not a problem per se, but I had a hard time accepting the protagonists love interest - which was a damp squib and subsequently a down-turn for the second half of the book.
Its good that AK Press are releasing fiction and I would definitely follow this author up given how promising this was.
March 5, 2013
Well written and interesting from cover to cover. Brilliant lecturer to boot!
December 11, 2023
First heard of the author, D.D. Johnston, on a lefty podcast and was very impressed by him and the description of his latest novel, Disnaeland, a post-apocalyptic black comedy set in Scotland. (The title of the book alone (Does not land) is cause for deep joy.)
I set out to acquire all his books, but only managed to get hold of Disnaeland and Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs, and thought it made sense to start with his first novel.
As a relative newcomer to political engagement (starting with Jeremy Corbyn’s election to Labour leadership and continuing to my current almost full-time engagement in revolutionary socialism), I appreciate and recognise parts of the context of theory and activism in which the story is set. The naturalism of the narrator’s native Scottish English adds to the authentic feel of the characters and story. Great inclusion of an homage to the “how capitalism works” scene in the classic book “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists”, with the bread and knives mechanics transposed to chocolate flakes. I recently watched Ken Loach’s film Land and Freedom, centring on a young British political activist who, very much like George Orwell, goes to fight with the communists (and anarchists) against the fascists in Spain in the 1930s. In that film, I got the idea that, metaphorically, the Spanish woman he falls for (Maria?) represents the spirit of Spanish resistance, and her fate represents the fate of that resistance. Similarly, in this book, perhaps, Wayne’s politics is perhaps encapsulated in his romantic relationships, or even in the women he loves? (Manette is an awesome character.)
I set out to acquire all his books, but only managed to get hold of Disnaeland and Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs, and thought it made sense to start with his first novel.
As a relative newcomer to political engagement (starting with Jeremy Corbyn’s election to Labour leadership and continuing to my current almost full-time engagement in revolutionary socialism), I appreciate and recognise parts of the context of theory and activism in which the story is set. The naturalism of the narrator’s native Scottish English adds to the authentic feel of the characters and story. Great inclusion of an homage to the “how capitalism works” scene in the classic book “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists”, with the bread and knives mechanics transposed to chocolate flakes. I recently watched Ken Loach’s film Land and Freedom, centring on a young British political activist who, very much like George Orwell, goes to fight with the communists (and anarchists) against the fascists in Spain in the 1930s. In that film, I got the idea that, metaphorically, the Spanish woman he falls for (Maria?) represents the spirit of Spanish resistance, and her fate represents the fate of that resistance. Similarly, in this book, perhaps, Wayne’s politics is perhaps encapsulated in his romantic relationships, or even in the women he loves? (Manette is an awesome character.)
September 7, 2018
DNF. It seems like this "semi-autobiographical" story of a white Scottish man who becomes interested in radical politics is engages some readers, but I could not get past all the racial slurs in the beginning. Added to that, the first three women we encounter are sexualized, some to an intense degree. I would argue that the first sex scene is degrading. There are better political novels out there.
January 28, 2014
Great read, I couldn't put it down. The authors ability to conjour up times, places and situations is uncanny to the extent I could feel and smell them. Basically a novel about a group of young people struggling into the world of work and responsibility, discovering how unpleasant it is, discovering politics, the possibility of resistence and then realising what a hell of a mess the world is and what a mixed up and hopeless minority they are. It is a biography that I could identify with. The author obviously writes from some first hand experience and includes some wonderful nougarts such trying to get rid of the SWP "I thought if I paid up Stan would go away ... but the Partys appeties would never be satisfied with a measley two pounds ... They hoped in time I'd become a full member, who would surrender most of his disposable income and all his sense of humour...". There is also a beautiful illustration of the mechanics of Capitalism using lumps of chocolate and a great summary of attending the Anarchist Bookfair: "At midday you want to celebrate the libertarian tradition in all its diversity. AFter half an hour you remember that anarcho-primitivists are mental (...) AT three o'clok you remember Situationists are annoying, autonomist Marxists are boring and platformists arre Trotskyists in disguise." "... the Spartacist League - even crazier than before." In the end the sheer enormity of it all overwhelms and disengagement in whatever way is not far behind with thoughts along the lines of "Have you ever looked at people, actual real people and realised that pretty much everyone you've ever met is fundamentally horrible? That they actually deserve to be sent to Iraq en masse; that actually if half the world died of asbestos poisoning, you wouldn't really miss them?" A book for the Occupy, Reclaim, Anti-Globalisation generation.
April 13, 2021
amor, nostalgia, tristeza, lucha, otros mundos posibles, melancolía, precariedad... la vida, al fin y al cabo.
Sencillo, pero bello. Me gustó.
(cualquiera que haya militado se verá reflejado en multitud de ocasiones)
Sencillo, pero bello. Me gustó.
(cualquiera que haya militado se verá reflejado en multitud de ocasiones)
June 11, 2012
I enjoyed it in the beginning but after awhile it started to drag on a bit. I'd still recommend it though.
March 7, 2014
Just couldn't be bothered to finish it. Too many things to read to plod through something meh
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews