| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
An extraordinary first novel from a highly promotable 22-year-old.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Book Description
An extraordinary first novel from a highly promotable 22-year-old.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this book on the strength of the blurb, particularly the comparison to Denis Johnson, and the promise of a 'truly original new voice in fiction'. I was well disappointed on both counts. The premise of a dislocated youth adrifting in a twilight world has been the subject of fiction for some considerable time now, and has almost always been done better than this. Whereas Johnson's luminous work is, to me, drenched in humanity, this book is a pretty pale imitation.
16 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Cold Water is an intriguing debut that has rightly received praise for its language and style. It is a short novel, but concentrated, so images and events play back on you at a later date. It demands reading at one sitting not just because of its readability but because the subtlety of the writing loses some of its effect if interrupted. A series of scenes and vignettes of bar flies and barmaids, the reader is soon immersed in a Manchester that is given an overdue cinematic hue. Sure, Manchester is notorious for its rain, its industrial decline and its music scene, but anyone who lives, works and goes out here knows that it can sometimes be a very special place - and the lack of previous literary descriptions of the city therefore seems surprising. Maybe it takes a young writer - unencumbered by the dominant London media scene and enamoured of American writing - to draw out the glamour from the grime. The Guardian has praised the novel's poetic descriptions, as if Riley sees things in a different way, but I felt that her style is best with its economy of narrative. She chisels a scene or an anecdote to a point and then lets it hang in the air without the bane of so much literary English fiction, the over explanation. Whereas the woolly monsters of Rushdie, Amis and Zadie Smith make a virtue of this emphasising a point, its rare to find a writer, particularly a debutant, who knows when to stop. In this she reminds me a little of John Lanchester or even Magnus Mills, but with the added virtue of a more colourful prose. Its got that strange nostalgia of the young, similar to Catcher in the Rye, where the best things - say, first love - have already happened and the future is not so much unknown, as on hold. She is exceptionally good at contrasting Carmel's wistful melancholy against the more sodden version of the bar flies that pepper the book. There's an accurate pessimism about the number of dreams broken and dreamers who've given up; again, something we're more used to hear from an American perspective - or in songs like Joni Mitchell's Last Time I saw Richard. Its good to read a book where every character is real, has real jobs or is trying not to have a real job. The only star or success is a washed up one - the glamorous singer, now a drug wreckage, crashed and burned. If I've a quibble, its with the wide cast of minor characters that makes it hard to care too much about them. It is the reality of barlife - passing faces - but a more contrived group would perhaps deliver the reader more empathy, beyond the narrator.; and it is very short, not a problem in itself, but, like a lot of first novels, two thirds through you realise that it is probably not going to surprise you, except in the prose, which is a delight throughout.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read this very short book in a few hours. It's very economically told, and parts of it are poetic. Carmel is an interesting and intelligent narrator and the whole thing has a cold and desolate atmosphere from page 1.
To be critical, there's not enough of it! I like books with minimal plots, but this is more like reading a snapshot of someone's life than a novel: the ending is completely unsatisfying as it doesn't really go anywhere, and the narrator doesn't change at all. The writing is strong so I might forgive this if it wasn't coupled with a very bizarre moment that doesn't really make sense and is never properly explained.
A good read, but needs to go much further.
To be critical, there's not enough of it! I like books with minimal plots, but this is more like reading a snapshot of someone's life than a novel: the ending is completely unsatisfying as it doesn't really go anywhere, and the narrator doesn't change at all. The writing is strong so I might forgive this if it wasn't coupled with a very bizarre moment that doesn't really make sense and is never properly explained.
A good read, but needs to go much further.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Let Down
I bought Cold Water on a recommendation when looking into books that are from local authors and that are set in Manchester. Read more
Published on 6 May 2005 by "kdonn2410"
Plenty of potential
Nothing much happens in this little novella, but the achingly beautiful writing makes up for the minimal action. Riley recreates the mood of rain-drenched Manchester perfectly. Read more
Published on 22 Jan 2005 by paperlady
Cold Water, Warm Read
Based in Manchester, Cold Water is the debut novel from Gwendoline Riley, featuring a snap shot of the life of Carmel McKisco. Read more
Published on 27 Aug 2004 by Luanne
A great read
I found Cold Water to be a breath of fresh air. From the first page I realised that I was not reading an immature book, but one with a mature viewpoint. Read more
Published on 25 Feb 2004 by A. CARTER
rainsoaked and romantic
I was a little sceptical when I started this book because the writer is young and has been "hyped", but I was blown away by the story of Carmel, a young barmaid and the strange... Read more
Published on 27 Oct 2002
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
