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Reading Fire Horses is like riding pillion on a motorbike driven by a poet. --Jonathan Trigell
Passionate, powerful, poetic a fine debut from an original talent. --John King
Passionate, powerful, poetic a fine debut from an original talent. --John King
Product Description
Joe Noone is a degenerate and enthusiastic explorer of the gutter. Fire Horses views England over the last 25 years, from small town to the grimy metropolitan underbelly, through the eyes and lens of one deeply troubled individual and his complex relationships with his childhood friend and the women in his life. Laced with dark humour, poetic beauty and angry political asides, Fire Horses is an unflinching lesson in modern history. An epic love story about ordinary people, the novel is an examination of the pain-inducing traps we can set for ourselves in life and how and whether we can escape them.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"You're fire horses, twice over. Conceived and born under the sign. You're the end of the world, you two."
Fire Horses is a contemporary novel written in a poetic literary voice dealing with the hard grit of British life as experienced through Joe Noone. It's about consequences and how Joe has to travel a world that doesn't always make sense whilst his past and future rage against him.
"All the sublime magic of youth had been knocked out of me; I was still wandering, but all the wonder had gone."
Joe doesn't walk a track that commercial demographics would predict walking into Burtons and spending money. He walks off the beaten track. Sometimes invisible, sometimes walking into traps that destroy those around him. He embraces the drinking culture and is wired chemically for sex, yet is a hopeless romantic.
"Hours were lost, the sky darkened, alcohol began to coat my brain and eat away at all the layers of sophistication, culture and self-consciousness."
Blur's, Modern Life is Rubbish, sums up this book well. Yet despite this, or because of this, there is hope and redemption threaded throughout the book. Mark Piggott shows us the rubbish, but embraces it and produces art and a life for Joe that has beauty once Mark has shown you how to look.
Mark Piggott obviously loves his characters. At one point Jo muses, "Only be a passenger if the driver has something to live for," and it could be said the same for Jo as a character in Mark's novel, "Only be the protagonist if Mark gives me something to live for." I can almost see Mark pitching the job to fictional Jo, "It will be bad, real bad. But you'll get to have lots of sex and I'll dangle the carrot of love before you. The money will be shit though."
As in life, where humour is born out of misery and gives reason, Mark's book is full of fun one liners. At one point Jo says, "It came as a relief when I reached my 34th birthday because then I knew for sure I wasn't Jesus."
As a debut novel it shines, both in the quality of the writing and the insights into mankind and modern history.
Now that's not bad.
Shiny stuff from rubbish - go buy it and see for yourself.
Fire Horses is a contemporary novel written in a poetic literary voice dealing with the hard grit of British life as experienced through Joe Noone. It's about consequences and how Joe has to travel a world that doesn't always make sense whilst his past and future rage against him.
"All the sublime magic of youth had been knocked out of me; I was still wandering, but all the wonder had gone."
Joe doesn't walk a track that commercial demographics would predict walking into Burtons and spending money. He walks off the beaten track. Sometimes invisible, sometimes walking into traps that destroy those around him. He embraces the drinking culture and is wired chemically for sex, yet is a hopeless romantic.
"Hours were lost, the sky darkened, alcohol began to coat my brain and eat away at all the layers of sophistication, culture and self-consciousness."
Blur's, Modern Life is Rubbish, sums up this book well. Yet despite this, or because of this, there is hope and redemption threaded throughout the book. Mark Piggott shows us the rubbish, but embraces it and produces art and a life for Joe that has beauty once Mark has shown you how to look.
Mark Piggott obviously loves his characters. At one point Jo muses, "Only be a passenger if the driver has something to live for," and it could be said the same for Jo as a character in Mark's novel, "Only be the protagonist if Mark gives me something to live for." I can almost see Mark pitching the job to fictional Jo, "It will be bad, real bad. But you'll get to have lots of sex and I'll dangle the carrot of love before you. The money will be shit though."
As in life, where humour is born out of misery and gives reason, Mark's book is full of fun one liners. At one point Jo says, "It came as a relief when I reached my 34th birthday because then I knew for sure I wasn't Jesus."
As a debut novel it shines, both in the quality of the writing and the insights into mankind and modern history.
Now that's not bad.
Shiny stuff from rubbish - go buy it and see for yourself.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I discovered Fire Horses through a friend, who had fallen in love with this book, and so I wanted to see what all of the fuss was about. And I wasn't let down. The writing is compelling and I was torn between sympathy and dislike for the main character. The novel is scattered with moments of beauty, humour and action that are frankly brilliant and this is probably the best book I have read so far this year and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a good read.
Format:Paperback
I was given this book to read and I am glad I did not have to pay for it. I read it all but it was hard work and when I finished it I was left wandering what the point of it was. I certainly missed the meaningful modern philosophy that other reviewers seem to have enjoyed.
The cover blurb talks about "riding pillion on a motorbike driven by a poet" and, indeed, some of the prose is very illustrative but it often labours too long looking for ever more colourful ways of describing the same thing or sentiment. And there are protracted sections of introspection that read like finger nails on a blackboard.
The cover blurb talks about "riding pillion on a motorbike driven by a poet" and, indeed, some of the prose is very illustrative but it often labours too long looking for ever more colourful ways of describing the same thing or sentiment. And there are protracted sections of introspection that read like finger nails on a blackboard.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Alcohol is the new heroin
Fire Horses follows the our protagonist Joe along with his friends and lovers Tony, Hermione, Julie and Becky from the 80s to the 21st Century and from the destitution of northern... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Brian
Beautifully written and true portrait of contemporary Britain
Joe Noone seems to have it all - a beautiful house built into a Mallorca hillside, a comfortable lifestyle, a beautiful girlfriend. Read more
Published on 5 Oct 2009 by Andrew Blackman
Excellent contemporary fiction
A very enjoyable novel - easy to read, dark but funny, honest and opinionated. Sweeps across the grit of the North in the 1980s, through Sussex and London in the 90s and 00s, via... Read more
Published on 27 July 2009 by Emma Jolly
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