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Product Description
Product Description
Andrew Norton, poet, visionary and hack, is handed a mysterious package that sees him quit London and head out along the A13 on an as yet undefined quest. Holing up in a roadside hotel, unable to make sense of his search, he is haunted by ghosts: of the dead and the not-so dead; demanding wives and ex-wives; East End gangsters; even competing versions of himself. Shifting from Hackney to Hastings and all places in-between, while dissecting a man's fractured psyche piece by piece, Dining on Stones is a puzzle and a quest - for both writer and reader.
About the Author
Iain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award); Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights Out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters and London Orbital. He lives in Hackney, East London.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Having enjoyed "London Orbital", I found Iain Sinclair's "Dining on Stones" completely unreadable. The first section of the book is very hard going indeed; almost a stream of consciousness in terms of writing, and once again we're on familiar ground with tales of travelling through the landscapes that Sinclair knows initimately. It's a new take on old material.
The prose is so dense with cleverness that it simply became unenjoyable to read, and more than a tad pretentious. I'd be genuinely surprised if many of the critics praising the book so glowingly on the back cover of the paperback version actually finished this weird, impenetrable book. A real mess of a read.
The prose is so dense with cleverness that it simply became unenjoyable to read, and more than a tad pretentious. I'd be genuinely surprised if many of the critics praising the book so glowingly on the back cover of the paperback version actually finished this weird, impenetrable book. A real mess of a read.
8 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
What's interesting about Iain Sinclair's fiction is the question of its categorization. What is it? What you read is true, surely? Not fiction atall? Or atleast mostly true? Sinclair loves to blur the lines, bend the rules, attempt to bewilder. He walks the twilight zone. Real meets false and false is real - if you get my drift. Self-caricatures blur into actual doppelgangers (that follow you round as you endeavour to find yourself). Dark-night-of-the-soul diary entries merge into reality, actual events, real people with real names. Stories within stories. Murders, kidnappings, expulsions, quests.
'Dining on Stones' is a great read. A jump forward (or backwards - but in advancing fashion). Sinclair's writing seems to have sacrificed much of the erudite-esoterica that gorged his earlier 'fiction' for a breeze into Kerouacian terrain: the freeflowing accessibility of real street poetry. No bull***t sentences that strike like a match. In the face. More Ray Chandler than Samuel Pepys. Crack-eyed muggers rather than ancient spectres. The industrial fringes of Essex as New Jersey (Sopranos credits). Of course, all the usual props, obsessions and characters are reliably present - for example, what would a Sinclair be without the hovering presence of David Rodinsky, Joseph Conrad or JG Ballard (who does the West ot Sinclair's East) - but you do sense that Sinclair has kept much of the excessive facts and figures to himself. Gone Beat, you could say. First-take notebook scrawling on the c2c, Fenchurch Street to Grays. Throw in Robert Mitchum, Max Bygraves and Kenneth Noye (or perhaps his doppelganger) to the mix and you're done.
And it works. The guy is down with it, on the pulse, putting mainstream 'hipster' (a contradiction in terms, I know) London writers to shame (Zadie, Will - back to your champagne parties if you please). This Hackney boy knows his subject and rhymes it well. An old guy that's to be feared (cross the road if you see him): he could out-rap the estates of Bow, Stratford and Leyton in one.
Listen to him love, hate, praise and gripe. Romanticise then denounce. That's London. You hate the decay, the dereliction, but you want it there, existing. To the point of loving it. Needing it. Get it? As for the Fairview-Barratt colonies that sprout like overnight mushrooms by railway lines, canals, on wastegrounds - don't even go there. Sinclair records the simultaneous love and hate for urban territory perfectly, uniquely. Mess with the landscape and you're messing with minds. Pen brandished like a knife. A f*** you attitude. It's all in the riffing, all in the rap, the rhymes.
In "Dining on Stones" the journeying heads further afield - Hackney to Hastings via the A13 to Purfleet and Grays (for an old copy of Dracula, what else?) - exile territory where "London has shifted", spewed away its undesirables: the flotsam and jetsam, the out-priced. Sinclair's writing is like a call to arms ("Territory" and "Orbital" providing the key, or map, if you like). It doesn't so much inspire as actually demand interaction: he walks the road, you walk the road. The books are only half written; your participation completes them. That's their design, their secret. Their demand. Beware.
'Dining on Stones' is a great read. A jump forward (or backwards - but in advancing fashion). Sinclair's writing seems to have sacrificed much of the erudite-esoterica that gorged his earlier 'fiction' for a breeze into Kerouacian terrain: the freeflowing accessibility of real street poetry. No bull***t sentences that strike like a match. In the face. More Ray Chandler than Samuel Pepys. Crack-eyed muggers rather than ancient spectres. The industrial fringes of Essex as New Jersey (Sopranos credits). Of course, all the usual props, obsessions and characters are reliably present - for example, what would a Sinclair be without the hovering presence of David Rodinsky, Joseph Conrad or JG Ballard (who does the West ot Sinclair's East) - but you do sense that Sinclair has kept much of the excessive facts and figures to himself. Gone Beat, you could say. First-take notebook scrawling on the c2c, Fenchurch Street to Grays. Throw in Robert Mitchum, Max Bygraves and Kenneth Noye (or perhaps his doppelganger) to the mix and you're done.
And it works. The guy is down with it, on the pulse, putting mainstream 'hipster' (a contradiction in terms, I know) London writers to shame (Zadie, Will - back to your champagne parties if you please). This Hackney boy knows his subject and rhymes it well. An old guy that's to be feared (cross the road if you see him): he could out-rap the estates of Bow, Stratford and Leyton in one.
Listen to him love, hate, praise and gripe. Romanticise then denounce. That's London. You hate the decay, the dereliction, but you want it there, existing. To the point of loving it. Needing it. Get it? As for the Fairview-Barratt colonies that sprout like overnight mushrooms by railway lines, canals, on wastegrounds - don't even go there. Sinclair records the simultaneous love and hate for urban territory perfectly, uniquely. Mess with the landscape and you're messing with minds. Pen brandished like a knife. A f*** you attitude. It's all in the riffing, all in the rap, the rhymes.
In "Dining on Stones" the journeying heads further afield - Hackney to Hastings via the A13 to Purfleet and Grays (for an old copy of Dracula, what else?) - exile territory where "London has shifted", spewed away its undesirables: the flotsam and jetsam, the out-priced. Sinclair's writing is like a call to arms ("Territory" and "Orbital" providing the key, or map, if you like). It doesn't so much inspire as actually demand interaction: he walks the road, you walk the road. The books are only half written; your participation completes them. That's their design, their secret. Their demand. Beware.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful
...
10 Feb 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
When i bought this book i thought that it was some sort of thriller horror novel, but i think i was wrong. When i got through the first fifty i was confused, but i kept going just because i had hope that it would get better. It didnt. I couldnt tell you what its about. When i got to page 150 i just stopped. It was just too hard to read. Maybe i didnt give it enough attention when i read. I gave it three stars because i didnt finish it so i cant judge it completely.
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