Ed Royal

by Chris Connelly

A chance meeting at a drug deal gone awry and it's love at first sight for 18 year-olds Adam Kelvin and Ailsa McCann. Seduced by the temptation of a Bohemian life soaked in erotic abandon, Adam quickly leaves his unstable and overbearing mother and stiflingly dull supermarket job for the basement of Ailsa's basement flat at her spectral parents' giant house in Edinburgh's New Town. Ensconced with Ailsa, Adam soon discovers a deep paranoid obsession for which he is absolutely ill-prepared. The quiet tension, interrupted by violent outbursts and events, builds into a shuddering climax with a long, torturous aftermath. Set against a backdrop of Edinburgh in the early 1980s, "Ed Royal" is a story of a city quietly divided by class and of an innocence quickly and cruelly destroyed by mind games and frightening desire.

188 pages, Paperback

First published June 21, 2010

About the author

Chris Connelly was born in Edinburgh in 1964 and has spent most of his life writing and playing music in various guises. He has had two books published previously: the first, "Confessions of the Highest Bidder", of poetry; the second, "Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible and Fried: My Life as a Revolting Cock", a memoir. He lives in Chicago with his wife and two children. "Ed Royal" is his first novel."

Reviews

[William Strasse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't say too much about this book without giving too much away, but the ending was definitely unexpected...although maybe I have a blind spot here because I haven't read much fiction for quite a while and I've never been inclined to read books that make you go "I wasn't expecting that". I also didn't really even read anything about the book...I just jumped in. There are a couple of very short chapters that you do feel at first like "Okay, that was random...wonder where that could be going?" but after a while the sense builds that it is all going somewhere...and it does. I think the way in which it switches gears slowly and subtly may be the most masterful part of it, although there is a lot of great imagery and I think Connelly has does a very good job of capturing a certain nihilistic teenage boredom through most of the book. I had the pleasure of interviewing him on the radio about 8 or 9 years ago and I remember him saying "There's still a teenager in here." Indeed. I can say if you're a fan of sex, drugs, and makeup you will not be disappointed.

[Serdar · Rating 3 out of 5]

To paraphrase what someone else once said about Shel Silverstein: as a novelist, Connelly is mostly a pretty good musician. An okay first outing, but I get the feeling it was written mainly to get some of his early-years experiences out on paper and out of his system. His music and lyrics hint at him being capable of a lot more, though. (Read "Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible, and Fried: My Life As A Revolting Cock" for some hilarious memoirs of time served with Finitribe, Revolting Cocks, Ministry, et al.)

[Arvo Zylo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Connelly's command of the written word is excellent. Although there are hints of a fictionalized memoir, which is what I expected, the story is heated and suspenseful much of the time. I didn't need any plot twists or surprise endings.

For the record, I only remember one typo, concerning the use of the word "wore" where it may have been "were".

[Barbara Larsen]

could not get into this one so never made it through it.