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Other Useful Numbers
 
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Other Useful Numbers (Paperback)

by Sarah Broughton (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.99
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Product details

  • Paperback: 180 pages
  • Publisher: Parthian Books (14 Feb 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1902638506
  • ISBN-13: 978-1902638508
  • Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.8 x 1.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 238,014 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review
dryly captures the madness and the sadness of families though this perfectly observed account --Marina Lewycka, author A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

distinctive and engaging The dialogue is really good and that's a rare thing. --Tessa Hadley

This Witty worrying debut rambles across 1980's England through various women's communities, from the terraced houses of a northern town to the communal squats of Hackney, via the muddy sleeping bags of Greenham common. Helen Sandler, Diva --Helen Sandler, Diva

Product Description
Tracy is a kleptomaniac and a compulsive liar. A lost soul, she drifts fecklessly about, sponging on her friends with a high turnover of menial jobs as she searches for Anita. In Tracy's mind if she's disappeared out of her life, then she must have disappeared out of this world, and that means detective work. But she is quintessentially unreliable, and it gradually becomes clear that it is Tracy's neurosis rather than Anita's disappearance that is the driving force. Set in a northern English city in the 1980's, Other Useful Numbers explores a lost community of women who are floundering in the murky waters of economic depression, infidelity and feminist politics and is in turns moving and hilarious. It's a novel about love, dependence, disappearance and recovery.

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars Other Useful Accounts of the Times, 11 Jun 2008
By Anita N. Pilgrim (Cardiff Wales) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Other Useful Numbers is an accomplished piece of writing and feminism which brought vividly back the 1980s for me, a time when I was a bewildered student. It's a great skill to be able to draw an unsympathetic character like Tracy and get the reader to be on her side. The characterisation rings true on many levels, such as her relationship with her friend Mike: typical of the kind of relationship which can spring up between shy people who have nothing in common except that they don't have anything in common with anyone-else.

I found it hugely comforting realising what a destabilising time the 1980s were. I remember feeling confused about who I was and where I should be going for over a decade in the 80s and 90s. Reading Other Useful Numbers made me realise that wasn't about my own limitations but about the nature of the time. A time of great strides in feminist practice, and yet a woman prime minister like Thatcher. A time of expanding lesbian and gay communities, and yet repressive legislation and reactionary institutional response. The economic vagaries of the time meant there were no assured pathways in life, just a general imperative to get a better job than your parents had expected for themselves with fewer jobs around.

There is a visit in the book to Greenham Common, where I remember going once with a friend. We went to visit another college friend who lived nearby, when we got there he was really pleased to see us but then there was a strange wait on the doorstep and he came back and said with great embarrassment that his mother wouldn't have us in the house because we were Greenham women!

I felt it was a great achievement, to encapsulate that time in one novel and one character like this, I've never read a book which made me understand the 1980s and myself as someone of those times so well.
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5.0 out of 5 stars refreshingly different, 30 Jan 2008
What I loved about this book was the way the writing conveyed such clear images - without being literal. The characters made me laugh out loud. Sarah Broughton captures the spirit of the '80's from a very particular point of view. Does anyone remember the enterprise allowance scheme?
A moving read - at turns funny and sad.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, 30 Jan 2008
This delightful book in the style of Jean Rhys, is at once moving,hilarious and nostalgic. It touches the emotions which we all feel and is a wonderful portrait of a girl struggling to rationalise the present with memories of the past.
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