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Love in The Time of Nudie Mags
I couldn't read the first time I found my dad's secret stash of mags, but things were never the same. By 1986, when I turned fourteen, it was everywhere I looked, but nowhere I went.
I kept a journal that the lunatics I called a family, a soul-crushing state school, glorious Soho, casual humiliation, and the things kids weren't meant to notice.
And then something happened that I didn't have the words for. It felt like learning to read all over again - only this time it hurt.
Love in the Time of Nudie mags is a coming-of-age tale flayed open and left twitching.
Funny, observant, revolting, and unflinching.
Actually, spare me the blurb. This book is probably not for you.
Love in the Time of Nudie Mags reached #1 in Amazon Kindle New Releases on Amazon.com and entered the Top 100 in British & Irish Literary Fiction.
I kept a journal that the lunatics I called a family, a soul-crushing state school, glorious Soho, casual humiliation, and the things kids weren't meant to notice.
And then something happened that I didn't have the words for. It felt like learning to read all over again - only this time it hurt.
Love in the Time of Nudie mags is a coming-of-age tale flayed open and left twitching.
Funny, observant, revolting, and unflinching.
Actually, spare me the blurb. This book is probably not for you.
Love in the Time of Nudie Mags reached #1 in Amazon Kindle New Releases on Amazon.com and entered the Top 100 in British & Irish Literary Fiction.
255 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 28, 2025
3 people are currently reading
2 people want to read
About the author
Chris Dangerfield
2 books1 follower"Dangerfield is some strange sort of Gnostic Demiurge... the world we see around us in all its filth, pathos, and iniquity is His creation"
- Will Self
Chris Dangerfield is the sort of writer who seems less born than accidentally leaked into the world. He published his first novel, Tired, etc, at 24, then spent a decade as a stand-up comedian, weaponising shame, disaster, and whatever remained of his nervous system.
A lifelong connoisseur of opiates, a pharmakon, and raconteur, he has been homeless, hopeless, high, and occasionally brilliant. He’s rubbed shoulders with the worst, stolen from the best, and attended more than twenty rehabilitation centres along the way.
After five years of art school and two of university, he earned a bachelor’s, a master’s, LSD burns on his frontal lobes, and a distrust of institutions by 23. He later became a successful entrepreneur in the eCommerce lock-picking world.
He now lives in the Cambodian jungle, chasing something he calls The Death Prize and writing a sprawling, postmodern, virtually unreadable novel more than 800 pages long.
Love in the Time of Nudie Mags is his latest novel.
- Will Self
Chris Dangerfield is the sort of writer who seems less born than accidentally leaked into the world. He published his first novel, Tired, etc, at 24, then spent a decade as a stand-up comedian, weaponising shame, disaster, and whatever remained of his nervous system.
A lifelong connoisseur of opiates, a pharmakon, and raconteur, he has been homeless, hopeless, high, and occasionally brilliant. He’s rubbed shoulders with the worst, stolen from the best, and attended more than twenty rehabilitation centres along the way.
After five years of art school and two of university, he earned a bachelor’s, a master’s, LSD burns on his frontal lobes, and a distrust of institutions by 23. He later became a successful entrepreneur in the eCommerce lock-picking world.
He now lives in the Cambodian jungle, chasing something he calls The Death Prize and writing a sprawling, postmodern, virtually unreadable novel more than 800 pages long.
Love in the Time of Nudie Mags is his latest novel.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 18, 2026
Warm, witty Adrian Mole style coming of age story told through a voice that’s impossible not to love. Love in the Time of Nudie Mags captures the awkwardness and humour of a young teenage boy through his observations which are sharp, funny, and deeply human, turning everyday moments into something tender and memorable.
December 29, 2025
A blend of Adrian Mole and a Carry on film; this book is a journey through school, friends and home life of a vulnerable 14 year old boy. It reads a little like Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha. I enjoyed the scrapes our hero got into (and out of) and felt protective of him through the difficult home episodes.
December 23, 2025
Love in the Time of Nudie Mags is a, sharp immanent elegy themed as a laddish reminiscence. On the surface it’s about growing up in 80s Estuary Dartford, finding an attunement to erotica within the sublime. That un-guided missile, energy of attraction towards alluring femininity, pre internet desire, awkward rituals of male adolescence. .
What works immediately is the texture....Even the nudie mags aren’t treated as crude objects but more like cultural artefacts, secret stashes, the ritualised shame and excitement of possession there's a focus on seemingly trivial or humorous memories which, in retrospect, become poignant.
The writer Chris Dangerfield manages to capture that desire used to be slow, mediated by effort, secrecy, and imagination, how at 14 years old we view and judge the world of adults around us,.. faults and all.
This gives the piece much of its emotional gravity.
Made me feel that something has been lost but then i am of a similar vintage.
There’s also an intelligence in how the piece avoids deliberated easy nostalgia. It doesn’t claim the past was “better” (although it was)... it does however suggest it was different in a way that shaped people more deeply. Desire had friction,... Discovery required risk.... Love wasn’t yet flattened into pixels and algorithms even with a Sinclair ZX 81/82 Spectrum.
That subtext lands well, especially for readers old (not that old) enough to recognise themselves in it.
Stylistically, the voice sits somewhere between an authentic working class memoir and a kind of cultural archaeology. There’s a lack of self pity. The humour is often perfectly observed, unforced, occasionally brutal but never cruel. ...Giving the read credibility.
The title does a lot of work and earns it. It’s funny, yes, but also quietly tragic. It frames the story as a love letter to a vanished emotional ecology, not just to teenage lust.
A deceptively modest yet layered piece with real soul....Quite how one can re-live being 14 again and allow the reader an open window upon that world is a masterpiece in itself.
P.S Was more a Suzanne Mizzi... than a Lusardi or Kathy lloyd kinda guy back then.
What works immediately is the texture....Even the nudie mags aren’t treated as crude objects but more like cultural artefacts, secret stashes, the ritualised shame and excitement of possession there's a focus on seemingly trivial or humorous memories which, in retrospect, become poignant.
The writer Chris Dangerfield manages to capture that desire used to be slow, mediated by effort, secrecy, and imagination, how at 14 years old we view and judge the world of adults around us,.. faults and all.
This gives the piece much of its emotional gravity.
Made me feel that something has been lost but then i am of a similar vintage.
There’s also an intelligence in how the piece avoids deliberated easy nostalgia. It doesn’t claim the past was “better” (although it was)... it does however suggest it was different in a way that shaped people more deeply. Desire had friction,... Discovery required risk.... Love wasn’t yet flattened into pixels and algorithms even with a Sinclair ZX 81/82 Spectrum.
That subtext lands well, especially for readers old (not that old) enough to recognise themselves in it.
Stylistically, the voice sits somewhere between an authentic working class memoir and a kind of cultural archaeology. There’s a lack of self pity. The humour is often perfectly observed, unforced, occasionally brutal but never cruel. ...Giving the read credibility.
The title does a lot of work and earns it. It’s funny, yes, but also quietly tragic. It frames the story as a love letter to a vanished emotional ecology, not just to teenage lust.
A deceptively modest yet layered piece with real soul....Quite how one can re-live being 14 again and allow the reader an open window upon that world is a masterpiece in itself.
P.S Was more a Suzanne Mizzi... than a Lusardi or Kathy lloyd kinda guy back then.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews