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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Duffy's masterpiece, 21 Nov 2002
By A Customer
Of her three London novels, the others are the sadly out of print Wounds and Londoners, I think this is Duffy's liveliest. I would never have heard of it if I hadn't read a piece by Michael Moorcock in which he recommended it and I must say he and Iain Sinclair have done wonders in pointing me towards many unfairly
obscure gems, including the books in the Harvill Press London
Fiction series, of which this is one. Duffy is a fine poet and this book is full of poetic imagery as well as a dry wit and sharp observation, if a little weak on narrative dynamic. Now if only Harvill could reprint the other two books in the series I wouldn't have to keep lending my already battered copies to friends. Read this with Moorcock's Mother London and Sinclair's Downriver, and you'll have read the three best London novels by living writers.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent., 4 Jun 2001
By A Customer
Duffy was 'doing' London it appears long before Moorcock, Ackroyd and Sinclair -- at least in this form. This book was a revelation to me. Totally engrossing, if a bit jerky here and there (which surprised me since I have long been a fan of Duffy's poetry) but paints a wonderful picture and has set me looking for the other two in the series. 'Old man Moloch picked up another soldier and bit his head off before stuffing the still wriggling limbs into his maw. A leg twitched over his chin and tickled him until his red tongue lolled and sucked it in. He could never decide whether Tommies or Gerries tasted better.' No doubt about Duffy's angles! And Meepers must be the first urban psychogeologist! This is one of those little gems you find almost by accident. And what a change to have a WOMAN'S vision of London. The lads have had their say. I wish the publisher had done the whole trilogy. The Paul Bailey introduction, in which he calls this an experimental novel, is very illuminating and helped prepare me for this unusual, first class novel. With Mother London and Downriver, it has to be one of the three most ambitious attempts ever to capture the city. With Hawksmoor and the other books in this series, it builds a remarkably consistent, if differently emphasized, picture of the living monster, the Great Wen, which attracts and repells at the same time.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A key work of London fiction, 12 May 2001
By A Customer
This book, one of Harvill's excellent new London Fiction Series, was first published in 1975 and can now be seen as an early incarnation of the whole Ackroyd/Sinclair thing about London's history going in many more directions than simply forward and back in a straight, historically-accurate, line. Down is the direction dealt with here, with the central character, Meepers, obsessed with the bones beneath our feet and the stories they tell. And the stories they tell, mixing history and myth, are interspersed with his story in a time-jumbling way which was once seen as scarily modern, as Paul Bailey observes in his introduction, but which we are now more used to. Meepers' major obsession is whether the post-Roman period of London's history is really as dark as it's painted. (The London Museum represents this time as simply a pile of fragments of classical architecture strewn amongst weeds.) This isn't as gothic as an Ackroyd, or as dense as a Sinclair, but it's pleasingly dark in places, with the past painted in all it's grubby grimness, but with a balancing element of humanity and warmth you'd expect from a book written by a woman, if you'll pardon my stereotyping. It's nicely of its time - a time when some proper bus routes ran open-top buses, not just tourist trips, and when you could share a flat in London for £7 a week. One of the key London novels, it's good to see it back in print. The other two novels in her London trilogy, Wounds 1969 and Londoners 1983 are still shamefully out of print at time of typing.
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by Patrick Wright
by Alexander Baron
by Lionel Davidson
by Nicholas Royle
by Anthony Frewin
