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Mark
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Apr 08, 2016 03:56PM
Loved Colin Wilson's 'Adrift In Soho,' but his 'The Outsider' wasn't my cup of anything. Have cast aside fifty pages in.
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Try his "Ritual in the Dark", an updating of the Ripper murders to the 1950s. It is years since I read it, but it made a lasting impression.
Many thanks for the tip, Andrew... will certainly follow up. The law of averages pretty much dictates that if a writer authors 5,932 books, as Mr Wilson has seemingly done, then there's bound to be more than one that would float my boat. As the old saying goes, even a working clock is wrong twice daily.
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Jumpin' Jack Flash: David Litvinoff and the Rock’n’Roll Underworld by Keiron Pim
It's a great read - and a five star biography that I heartily recommend for anyone interested in London, social history, the 1960s and interesting lives - but I cannot get some of the darker aspects of his life out of my head.
Click here to read my review
5/5
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Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World by Gary Lachman
A great introduction to the life and legacy of controversial and divisive man.
I enjoyed it so much that, upon finishing, I immediately bought three more books by Gary Lachman.
Click here to read my review
4/5
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Thatcher Stole My Trousers by Alexei Sayle
Click here to read my review
3.5/5
Real TigersThis is the third in a series, the previous titles being "Slow Horses" and "Dead Lions" about an outpost of the intelligence services called Slough House where those who have messed up serve out their time. It is cynical, perturbingly credible, and very funny. If its author Mick Herron meets with a tragic "accident", readers will know who is behind it.
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It sez here....
Mick Herron is a novelist and short story writer whose books include the Slough House series, the first of which - the Steel-Dagger nominated Slow Horses - has been described as the 'most enjoyable British spy novel in years'. The second Slough House novel, Dead Lions, won the 2013 CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger, and was picked by the Sunday Times as one of the best 25 crime novels of the past five years. Mick was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and now lives in Oxford.
This is a stunning first novel by Barney Norris, a young playwright still in his twenties. Five lives interconnect, five voices, male and female, from adolescent to old age, all totally convincingly rendered in a litany of love, loss, longing, desperation and hope. Don't miss it!
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Added Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain by Barney Norris to my list of books to read. Thanks.
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Any Day Now: David Bowie the London Years by Kevin Cann
It's an amazing achievement - every page is awash with detail and numerous photos to further inform and engage. It’s quite wonderful and essential reading for any serious Bowie fan.
Click here to read my review
5/5
I've just finished reading Windows On The Moon, by Alan Brownjohn, which I'd initially been drawn to for the incredibly shallow reason that the publishers chose the same photo for the cover as Constable chose for their edition of Patrick Hamilton’s Slaves Of Solitude. Call me impressionable. You won't be too far off.Set in the immediate aftermath of WWII and with its focus on a family -- and those around them, but not necessarily known to them -- in austere London, Windows On the Moon is a quiet and nuanced novel perhaps best summed up by one of its final lines: “It was odd that the most important parts of life, she thought, the things that changed you forever, went on in the midst of so much ordinariness, so many trivial things.”
Sits quite nicely alongside the works of Patrick Hamilton or Norman Collins’ London Belongs To Me, which you can consider as being a recommendation. The only thing preventing me from awarding that elusive fifth star was the cricket match content, which left me with a fairly strong notion that I was missing out on some seriously important metaphors and analogies by not having the slightest knowledge of cricket.
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"The Go-Between” is a tense, rich, evocative, and multi-layered novel. Quite brilliant.
Thanks CQM2 - never in doubt!
Click here to read my review
5/5
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"Billy Liar" is every bit as good as the film. The sense of time and place are stunningly evoked, and each character depiction is convincing and vivid. Brilliantly written, Billy Liar perfectly captures that moment when adult responsibilities impinge on teenage dreams, as Billy attempts to avoid responsibility, and rise above conformity and mediocrity. A mere 150 pages, this book is an enduring classic - funny, provocative, and profound.
Click here to read my review
5/5
Oddly enough, while I enjoyed Billy Liar, I think I prefer his later novels. Palace Pier was fun, but Soho, his final work, really lit up my life. It's one to shout about. I've recently scooped up two more of his later works, Good Grief and Bimbo, and look forward to tucking in.
Whatever you do, please don't overlook Journey Through A Small Planet by Emanuel Litvinoff... you'll love it, I promise!
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Click here to read my review
5/5
"The Hopkins Manuscript" R.C.Sherriff
R.C. Sherriff, best known for his WWI play "Journey's End", wrote this remarkable and prescient novel in 1939, when the world was moving towards catastrophe. In the novel the catastrophe is of quite a different sort, as the moon heads for collision with the earth. Despite this, the book is not really science fiction, but an examination of how individuals and society react before, during and after such a threat. The narrator, Edgar Hopkins, is a boring, self obsessed, snobbish, rural poultry breeder, who has much in common with Patrick Hamilton's Ernest Eccles or Mr. Thwaites. He is writing a conscious account in order to leave posterity some explanation of what caused the final destruction, and despite his personal vanity, his account of the disaster and its aftermath is compellingly readable. Its picture of how mankind, having survived the catastrophe, then destroys itself through greed, envy and bellicosity is as pertinent and contemporary for today as it was in 1939. A sobering and frightening work, which deserves to be much better known. Persephone Books, who have republished the novel, have done so in an edition of considerable elegance.
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I used to work down the road from the Persephone Books shop - a civilised place of tranquility and understated joy.
"The Hopkins Manuscript" by R.C. Sherriff sounds well worth a read...
In The Hopkins Manuscript we watch through his eyes as the moon veers off course, draws slowly closer to the earth, and finally crashes into it on May 3rd 1946. Because it falls into the Atlantic much of humanity survives – only to generate new disasters. But this is not science fiction in the mode of H G Wells's The War of the Worlds; it is a novel about human nature.
The 'manuscript' was named after its 'author', a retired Hampshire schoolmaster whose greatest interest in life is his Bantam hens; rather self-important and lacking much sense of humour, Edgar Hopkins nevertheless emerges as an increasingly sympathetic and credible character, the ordinary man with whom we very much identify as R.C. Sherriff describes the small Hampshire village trying to prepare itself in its last days. In Journey's End he evoked the trench experience as he had lived it; in The Hopkins Manuscript he describes the catastrophe as he might have lived it.
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Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group by Ian F. Svenonius
Click here to read my review
4/5
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"Journey's End" is a gripping and powerful read. It’s a stunning and deeply moving evocation of the sacrifices made by so many young people during the conflict of 1914-1918 and well worth the hour or two it takes to read.
Click here to read my review
5/5
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Andrew wrote: "R.C. Sherriff, best known for his WWI play "Journey's End"
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The Blade Artist by Irvine Welsh
A very welcome return for one of Irvine Welsh’s greatest literary creations, the psychotic Frank “Franco” Begbie.
Click here to read my review
4/5
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"Forgotten Voices of the Somme: The Most Devastating Battle of the Great War in the Words of Those Who Survived" by Joshua Levine
A powerful reminder of the slaughter and suffering that took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916.
Click here to read my review
Funnily enough, I've just finished reading The Secret History Of The Blitz, also by Joshua Levine. Quite good and interesting, although a bit dry and scattered. Recommended, but I wouldn't urge you to sling it onto the very top of your stack.
I should mention that, in two separate passages, Joshua Levine flaunted the good taste of referencing and quoting Hamilton's The Slaves Of Solitude in the aforementioned book.
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Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb
Click here to read my review
5/5
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The No.9 Bus to Utopia by David Bramwell
When David Bramwell's girlfriend left him he was inspired to get away and investigate a number of communities who might help him to find a better way of living. David journeys to various communities which he feels might exemplify a Utopian ideal of communal living. Some I’d heard of, most I hadn't. Nothing he discovers is especially surprising, or revelatory, however he is such an engaging guide and companion that each chapter is a delight.
Click here to read my review
4/5
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The Lubetkin Legacy by Marina Lewycka
Click here to read my review
A missed opportunity.
2/5
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The Magic Christian by Terry Southern
It’s a dated satire that is sporadically funny
Click here to read my review
3/5
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New York Rocker: My Life in the Blank Generation with Blondie, Iggy Pop, and Others, 1974-1981 by Gary Valentine
An essential read for anyone who is fascinated by the early New York punk scene
Click here to read my review
4/5
John Mair: "Never Come Back"
First published in 1941, this is the only novel by journalist John Mair, who was killed in an RAF training accident in 1942. It is now only available second hand in the 1986 OUP 20th Century Classics reprint edition, or very cheaply on Kindle.
It is a magnificent thriller in the tradition of Buchan, Ambler, Household and Bruce Hamilton, with nods towards early Graham Greene and Patrick Hamilton, but with a wit and humour that brings to mind Huxley, Waugh and even Wodehouse.
Essentially a "39 Steps" style chase story, in which the protagonist, Desmond Thane, has to escape from an internationalist establishment conspiracy group, intent on taking power in Britain in the early days of the war.
What makes it original is that Thane is an absolute shit: murderer, liar, fantasist, womanizer, one of the first anti-heroes in crime fiction, but still keeping the reader on his side, and a precursor of Patrick Hamilton's Ralph Ernest Gorse.
George Orwell reviewed the novel very favourably in "The Spectator" in 1941, and it is interesting to note that one of Thane's persecutors and torturers is called O'Brien. Some of the scenes of wartime London are also echoed in Greene's "Ministry of Fear".
A prescient novel that deserves modern recognition.
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^ Thanks once again Andrew. I've set up a separate thread as I plan to read this book and, I hope, a few other Hamiltonians might also be tempted...
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
I hope so too! They will not be disappointed!
Nobody else has rated this, but I imagine that few share my obsession. Charles Morrison's 'We've Been A Long Time In Coming, Boys'....
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
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"Skin Lane" by Neil Bartlett
A wonderful read.
5/5
Click here to read my review
I have just finished
The ninth in a series of crime novels set in a small town near Bergerac in Périgord, and, like its predecessors, absolutely irresistible. The central character is Bruno, the town's chief of police, the recurring cast of other characters engaging, the descriptions of local culture, cuisine, wine, landscape and tradition fascinating and enticing. The crimes and mysteries spring as often from the murky and painful history of occupied and post-war France as from current social problems, and are richly and perturbingly informative. If you haven't yet discovered Martin Walker's Bruno novels, you are in for a treat!
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You won't regret it, though anything less Hamiltonian is hard to imagine!
The Patrick Hamilton Appreciation Society
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