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The Cardiff Trilogy #1
Five Pubs, Two Bars and a Nightclub
'John Williams could form of literary triumvirate with Bateman and Welsh...This is as world of dope, docks and prostitution, a culture tha is part-Cardiff, part-Caribbeean. FIVE PUBS is everything one would hope from as keen a critic of neo-noir as Williams' Observer 'The sheer liveliness of the stories, which fizz with pace and energy, makes for a really entertaining and intriguing account of life on the mean streets of Cardiff' The Times 'A brilliant book...It has all the classic traits of urban slick plot, cold-blooded betrayals and withering one-liners' Independent 'A fun book about pushers and prostitutes...A mixture of tongue-in-cheek humour and the seedier side of docklands life' Glasgow Herald 'Excellent - a fast and funny soap of everyday villains, jostling for a score, some love and even spiritual enlightenment in Cardiff's Butetown' Bizarre 'Literature as urban bright, vibrant, and fiercely individual' Sunday Times
- GenresFiction
207 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1999
About the author
John Williams
14 books13 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
John L. Williams was born, lives and works in his hometown of Cardiff. He writes novels, short stories and screenplays set in a Cardiff that is changing fast. Williams celebrates the lives lived beneath the radar, the hustlers and grifters, hookers and guitar players, drug dealers and shoplifters, looking to make a crust or catch a break, looking for love. They are crime novels turned inside out. The police tried (unsuccessfully) to ban his Bloody Valentine (Harper Collins, 1994).
John has also published a number of non-fiction titles including his biographies of Black Power leader Michael X and Shirley Bassey. He currently writes for the Mail on Sunday and the Independent and is co-organiser of the Laugharne Festival. John has also worked for the NME and The Sunday Times, and has been a contributing editor of GQ magazine.
Selected Publications:
Non–fiction:
Into the Badlands (Paladin, 1991)
Bloody Valentine (HarperCollins, 1994)
Michael X: A Life in Black and White (Century, 2008)
Miss Shirley Bassey (Quercus, 2010)
Fiction:
Five Pubs, Two Bars and a Nightclub (Bloomsbury, 1999)
Cardiff Dead (Bloomsbury, 2000)
The Prince of Wales (Bloomsbury 2003)
Temperance Town (Bloomsbury, 2004)
The Cardiff Trilogy (Bloomsbury, 2006)
[http://www.literaturewales.org/writer...]
John L. Williams was born, lives and works in his hometown of Cardiff. He writes novels, short stories and screenplays set in a Cardiff that is changing fast. Williams celebrates the lives lived beneath the radar, the hustlers and grifters, hookers and guitar players, drug dealers and shoplifters, looking to make a crust or catch a break, looking for love. They are crime novels turned inside out. The police tried (unsuccessfully) to ban his Bloody Valentine (Harper Collins, 1994).
John has also published a number of non-fiction titles including his biographies of Black Power leader Michael X and Shirley Bassey. He currently writes for the Mail on Sunday and the Independent and is co-organiser of the Laugharne Festival. John has also worked for the NME and The Sunday Times, and has been a contributing editor of GQ magazine.
Selected Publications:
Non–fiction:
Into the Badlands (Paladin, 1991)
Bloody Valentine (HarperCollins, 1994)
Michael X: A Life in Black and White (Century, 2008)
Miss Shirley Bassey (Quercus, 2010)
Fiction:
Five Pubs, Two Bars and a Nightclub (Bloomsbury, 1999)
Cardiff Dead (Bloomsbury, 2000)
The Prince of Wales (Bloomsbury 2003)
Temperance Town (Bloomsbury, 2004)
The Cardiff Trilogy (Bloomsbury, 2006)
[http://www.literaturewales.org/writer...]
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 8, 2018
The title refers to the eight locales from which each of these interwoven stories takes its title. The crime-tinged tales are all generally set in Butetown, a working-class, largely Caribbean neighborhood in Cardiff, Wales. Characters move in and out between the stories, most of which are set contemporarily and involve, crime, drugs, and sex. While there is an air of seediness about the shady lives everyone leads, Williams gives each story just enough humor and humanity to keep the collection light. Fun stuff. If you like this, definitely check out his subsequent novel, Cardiff Dead, which features some of the same characters (pothead Col, lesbian pimp Bobby, and heavy Kenny Ibdullah to name a few). Also check out Williams' debut novel, Faithless and his earlier travelogue of American crime writers, Into the Badlands. One of the stories in this volume previously appeared in the Fresh Blood 2 anthology.
August 25, 2019
Something of a cut-rate Irvine Welsh without the dialect, except that it’s actually Welsh. I felt my IQ dropping the further I read.
July 14, 2022
This is NOT a murder mystery. A man does go missing, but nobody seems to care - no "follow-up".
This is more like an introduction to a city - what the author claims to be a "fictional" Cardiff - and the (mostly) low-income people who live and work there. Author says the places don't exist - but some of them do!
I enjoyed it: a series of eight stories, introducing inter-related people.
It's sort of like Anne Tyler - but gritty! Sort of like Glasgow - but it's Cardiff! and super "multi-cultural".
This is more like an introduction to a city - what the author claims to be a "fictional" Cardiff - and the (mostly) low-income people who live and work there. Author says the places don't exist - but some of them do!
I enjoyed it: a series of eight stories, introducing inter-related people.
It's sort of like Anne Tyler - but gritty! Sort of like Glasgow - but it's Cardiff! and super "multi-cultural".
January 3, 2020
Nebylo to tak zlé. Akorát vzhledem k tomu, že město Cardiff znám, tak pro mne bylo trochu složité si představit drogové podsvětí z knížky. Ale odehrávat se to např. v Berlíně, tak s tím nemám pravděpodobně žádný problém. Ale neříkám, že v Cardiffu podobná drogově mafiánská scéna nefunguje a neexistuje, proto se tomu taky říká podsvětí. Některé povídky byly lepší, některé slabší. Osobně se mi nejvíc líbila povídka o pirátském rádiu a vyhození mostu do povětří. Celkově hodnotím 3-4/5.
April 11, 2020
Nedočteno. Odloženo u poslední povídky, protože tohle byla veliká nuda. Knihu jsme kdysi pořídil asi za 19 korun v Levných knihách, takže to zjištění že kniha za moc nestojí, zase tak nebolelo. Autorovi se omlouvám, ale kamarádi nebudeme.
March 9, 2015
Oito pequenas histórias que se cruzam e que têm como ponto comum, a vida atribulada em Butetown, um bairro típico localizado em Cardiff onde se cruzam vidas atribuladas e onde grupos de gangasters entram em viscerais rivalidades.
John Williams, surge neste livro, como um excelente contador de histórias que, neste caso, têm como pano de fundo, cinco pubs, dois bares e um nightclube onde a maior parte da ação se desenrola. Com momentos absolutamente hilariantes, como por exemplo, quando um grupo decide fundar uma rádio pirata, a leitura desta narrativa vai-se tornando cada vez mais aliciante atingindo o clímax com um uma história de redenção que não nos deixa indiferente, na tentativa da personagem em se evadir de um mundo que, até determinado momento, só lhe tinha trazido dissabores: Com uma prosa simples e vernácula, Williams transporta-nos para o submundo da droga, da prostituição, das negociatas incrivelmente suspeitas, mas fá-lo de tal maneira que não nos choca, muito pelo contrário, compreendemos perfeitamente todas as idiossincrasias que caracterizam todas as situações e os seus personagens.
É uma leitura agradável, também ela de puro entretenimento, que nos diverte mas que, ao mesmo tempo, nos comove.
John Williams, surge neste livro, como um excelente contador de histórias que, neste caso, têm como pano de fundo, cinco pubs, dois bares e um nightclube onde a maior parte da ação se desenrola. Com momentos absolutamente hilariantes, como por exemplo, quando um grupo decide fundar uma rádio pirata, a leitura desta narrativa vai-se tornando cada vez mais aliciante atingindo o clímax com um uma história de redenção que não nos deixa indiferente, na tentativa da personagem em se evadir de um mundo que, até determinado momento, só lhe tinha trazido dissabores: Com uma prosa simples e vernácula, Williams transporta-nos para o submundo da droga, da prostituição, das negociatas incrivelmente suspeitas, mas fá-lo de tal maneira que não nos choca, muito pelo contrário, compreendemos perfeitamente todas as idiossincrasias que caracterizam todas as situações e os seus personagens.
É uma leitura agradável, também ela de puro entretenimento, que nos diverte mas que, ao mesmo tempo, nos comove.
June 22, 2015
Ran into this book in the heaping $1.50 cart outside Strand Bookstore. Title intrigued me, and so did the stories inside, for the most part. Several entertaining vignettes about the comic twists inherent in the goings-on of severely self-interested people going head-to-head with other self-interested people. That said, the collection started to lag in energy towards the end, and the limitations of devoting so few pages to such a big world of characters becomes more visible.
January 29, 2014
A series of interlocking short stories in and around Butetown before the Bay development, with a cast of loveable rogues and light-hearted criminal escapades. A particularly good read for anyone who knows Cardiff well and folk who want a crime novel without a whodunnit.
January 22, 2011
... or I didn't like it that much.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews