- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Granta Books; New edition edition (7 Mar 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1862074887
- ISBN-13: 978-1862074880
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.6 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 643,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
'This is Wales seen from a car driven by Hunter S. Thompson with Joseph Conrad and Alan Ginsberg as passengers... As with Withnail and I, you can get very lost in the world of this marvellous book, governed by its own irresistible logic' Russell Celyn Jones, The Times 'Sinclair's use of tight-lipped, desiccated prose is at times reminiscent of John Banville. When he cartwheels across a page, his blurr is almost the shade of James Joyce - plus there's the clear ironic glitter of Don DeLillo, a kind of compressed, intelligent prong. But Sinclair is reminiscent of no-one but himself. His writing sings' Scotsman 'Landor's Tower, like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, holds you captive' Sunday Telegraph
Product Description
Commissioned to write about a disastrous attempt to create an estate around a medieval abbey in Wales, a London writer is sidetracked by a series of bizarre suicides in the secret defense industries, and by witnesses who claim to know the truth about a decades-old murder case. He employs a burned-out media man named Kaporal to research these events, only to find himself accused of murder.
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First Sentence
No flies, no flies on Billy Silverfish. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
No flies, no flies on Billy Silverfish. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book is intense. It reads like the automatic writing of an obsessive. The references explode outward like a firework but the text is always forced back to the subject. The writing is unusual but very very powerful. It's hard to look away from the story and there is a depth here that very few writers could match. This book clearly contains a great deal of research. It cannot be easily described. (But oooh it's good).
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
So that's what it was all about ... I've just read the synopsis. Locally, every sentence or indeed every paragraph made sense. They just didn't seem to add up to anything like a story that made sense. Characters come and go. Storylines come and go. Nevertheless, it was oddly enjoyable, with a fine sense of place, and wonderful vivid language.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This feels like Sinclair deciding it was time he got out into the country for a bit and put some ancestral mud on his boots. You get the impression from the tone that, looking back on Mother London's silhouette, he thinks he might have made a serious mistake. This is a bit like the Young Ones on Summer Holiday -- a big double decker bus wandering around the Welsh borders full of people who don't really belong there. I loved it. But then Sinclair is my man. He's even better than Moorcock or Ackroyd or Kersh or all the others. I enjoyed the gingerly relationship with the natural world but I bet Sinclair will be glad to be back in the city. He is turned on by Hawksmoor, not hawks. Give yourself a real treat. Full strength stuff by one of Britain's best.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Sinclair the novelist returns, on cracking form
I was put off starting this, the first formal novel he's committed for ages, by a dismissive review by some misbegotten hack in one of the broadsheets; 'He's lost it', the... Read more
Published on 19 Jun 2001
Brilliant
Not much I can add to the professional reviews. This is a brilliant, enjoyable, funny, quirky book by one of Britain's finest writers. Enjoy!
Published on 26 April 2001
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