I'll admit that when I purchased this book I was completely ignorant of Richard Milward's work, and that I only picked up the title on a whim because I'd forgotten to bring a book to read on a long train journey and this looked to be the most interesting title in the station's branch of WH-Smiths... Never before have I been so glad to be forgetful!
Ten Storey Love Song now ranks as my #1 book of all time, bar none. Written in a very Kerouac fashion (no chapters or paragraphs, just one continuous block of prose)and with a style that reminds me of Hunter S Thompson at his finest. Indeed, I like to think of this book as 'Fear & Loathing in Las 'Boro'.
Poetic, beautiful and somehow making the drudgery of an impoverished life in a Middlesbrough tower block seem romantic, you can't help but fall in love with this book.
Milward's 'Apples' has been heaped with critical praise, went on to become a stage production and is tipped be adapted for TV. But to my mind TSL surpasses his debut by a long way.
