- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Gibson Square Books Ltd; Paperback Original edition (8 April 2010)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1903933692
- ISBN-13: 978-1903933695
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 307,459 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'Fiendishly funny and devastatingly acute' Will Self --1
'You'll be retelling it to friends until they give in and buy a copy themselves.' METRO --1
'I found myself chortling... Hilarious.' Paul Burston, TIME OUT --1
'Delightful...an urban Archers.' Boyd Tonkin, INDEPENDENT 'Deliciously extravagant.' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Mischievous... Imagine Armistead Maupin remodelling Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood on the personals section of the Hackney Gazette. DAILY MAIL --1
'I found myself chortling... Hilarious.' Paul Burston, Time Out --1
'You'll be retelling it to friends until they give in and buy a copy themselves.' METRO --1
'I found myself chortling... Hilarious.' Paul Burston, TIME OUT --1
'Delightful...an urban Archers.' Boyd Tonkin, INDEPENDENT 'Deliciously extravagant.' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Mischievous... Imagine Armistead Maupin remodelling Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood on the personals section of the Hackney Gazette. DAILY MAIL --1
'I found myself chortling... Hilarious.' Paul Burston, Time Out --1
Product Description
Welcome to Sam Taylor's world. A single girl with a dog, she moves into a new flat and tumbles headlong into a rollercoaster life in a dodgy postcode with 'potential'. Female friends, hopeless bachelors, would-be artists, poets dressed as reindeers, rabbis, lesbian mums, conflicted vicars, and a bewildered boyfriend, are all thrown together through chance and circumstance. From the moment she arrives and discovers her neighbours rehearsing opera al fresco at midnight, their collective tales of romance, aspiration and embarrassing failure bind them together into one mad, idiosyncratic family. For anyone who has ever lived in a flat or just waved someone off to the city, here is an irrepressible dose of laugh-out-loud humour ...
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
You may know Sam Taylor as a columnist with The Oldie Magazine. If you do, you may have found yourself in a fit of involuntary laughter on the tube or on the bus while reading her monthly musings over the years. Hers is an impressive wit, resting largely on her powers of observation and on her attention to detail in chronicling the lives of her friends and acquaintances.
Her book is a gem. Gibson Square Publishers have a good eye for good writers and she most certainly belongs among them. Her style is natural, accessible and fluid. Her humour is piercing, but never cruel. She writes from the midst of her world with a childlike wonder, kicking pretensions into touch and never failing to celebrate the absurdities which beset her own life and the lives of those she encounters.
Despite the many laughs in this book - and there are many - there is, perhaps, a more poignant message inherent it the stories it recounts: that while the dreams we all had when thrown together in London in the nineties and naughties may not have come true, the friendships we formed in London's bedsits and bars are our finest glory.
A thoroughly enjoyable read.
Her book is a gem. Gibson Square Publishers have a good eye for good writers and she most certainly belongs among them. Her style is natural, accessible and fluid. Her humour is piercing, but never cruel. She writes from the midst of her world with a childlike wonder, kicking pretensions into touch and never failing to celebrate the absurdities which beset her own life and the lives of those she encounters.
Despite the many laughs in this book - and there are many - there is, perhaps, a more poignant message inherent it the stories it recounts: that while the dreams we all had when thrown together in London in the nineties and naughties may not have come true, the friendships we formed in London's bedsits and bars are our finest glory.
A thoroughly enjoyable read.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A friend recommended this. It's not my normal read. I spent the whole time with a smile on my face and frequently laughed out loud. The characters are well drawn and while things never seem to work out quite how they expect them to the humour is never cruel. For me it rang a lot of bells. I read it straight through. The stories are episodic though interlinked. You could dip in and out of the book and still know what's going on. A good bedside read.
Format:Paperback
If I could give this book 0 stars I would.It is complete and utter rubish. No plot and it is the kind of book that someone in 6th form would write.The photo on the back cover of the so called 'Author' shows her or him to be gloomy and quite unpleasent to the eye.Please neither or borrow this tripe.It is yet another middle class and bored woman trying hard to write something witty and off the wall.It is instead the most yawn worthy and dreadful thing I have ever seen in print.The fact it is a book club choice is typical of the kind of book a group of smug women with no sense of irony would lap up and discuss over cheap wine and crackers. Oh dear give me a Patrica Highsmith or Burchill anyday.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
entertaining
If you have ever lived in or around London (and have a sense of humour) then you will find this funny. Maybe not many belly laughs but entertaining enough to keep you reading.
Published 6 months ago by Mr. K. Prior
Not really a novel.
I picked up this book with really anticipation having lived "East of Islington" myself for a couple of years. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Helenbookworm
not up to the hype!
I bought this book because of the wonderful reviews. I found this book not to be particularly funny and there was no real story to it. Read more
Published 10 months ago by gb reader
Didn't finish this
Chose this book for our book club read based on its 5 star rating. No-one enjoyed it and many didn't finish it. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Barbs
A Wonderfully Entertaining Saga of London Eccentricity
Samuel Johnson remarked famously to Boswell: 'No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. Read more
Published on 12 April 2010 by S. Barfield
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