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Sick Notes
 
 
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Sick Notes (Paperback)

by Gwendoline Riley (Author)
3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 220 pages
  • Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd (4 Mar 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0224064290
  • ISBN-13: 978-0224064293
  • Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.4 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 141,137 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

"Riley writes with shivering urgency, in goosebumps."
--"Guardian"


Product Description

Returning to Manchester, her broken home, Esther is on the lookout for love. But love, it seems, is not looking out for her. Back in the flat she shares with her best friend, Donna, surrounded by empty gin bottles, with her past life taped up in stacked cardboard boxes, she writes DON'T GO OUT on her hand in biro, and seems to have closed the door on the world. Then Newton appears, and the world opens. A singer from Vermont, Newton has bad skin, a straggly beard and a drinker's face - but a fantastic smile. Newton changes everything. But for how long? Following on from her highly praised first novel, Gwendoline Riley has written a powerful and moving study of urban disaffection, female friendship and the longing for love and redemption. Stylish, original and beautifully written, Sick Notes reminds us of the awkwardness, the urgency of romance - and what it feels like to be young.
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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Sick Notes
53% buy the item featured on this page:
Sick Notes 3.1 out of 5 stars (7)
Cold Water
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£5.49
Tuesday Nights and Wednesday Mornings: A Novella and Stories
9% buy
Tuesday Nights and Wednesday Mornings: A Novella and Stories 5.0 out of 5 stars (1)
Joshua Spassky
6% buy
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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.1 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, true and tragic, 18 May 2006
By N. Gower-Jones "northern_jonesy" (Manchester, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Sick Notes (Paperback)
There are few books which really touch me in the way that this one does. It is gorgeous and painful, wonderful and tragic all in the same breath. Most importantly and skillfully of all, it captures that once-in-a-lifetime moment that we all experience - the moment where we should stop, act, grab hold of the things that are precious to us and hold onto them with religious fervour, but somehow we don't. We keep walking on, abandoning the beauty in front of our face, in the vain hope that there is something better round the corner.

At the heart of this novel lies one question. What if this moment, the one that is happening here, now, is the only chance I'll get? What if this is the only time I might ever find the one person who can make me happy? Should I gamble everything on this moment? What if I'm wrong? Worse still, if this is the moment - if this is "the one", what happens if I do nothing? Will I have lost the only chance I EVER had to be happy?

This book makes me feel 19 years old again, makes me cry and yearn and wish for salvation all at once. I haven't read anything as touching or as true in a long long time.
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7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars sick?maybe, 11 Dec 2004
i think this was a lovely detailed description of people and place but mostly the main character whose realy disfunctional.she doesn't do a good job of coping with life but while she's floating about writing notes on her arm with her biro you realy warm to her and want to wrap her up and look after her.
i haven't read cold water yet so i don't know if i'd feel different if i'd read that first.
you realy get a feeling your reading about the author in this book.but personaly i like the sound of her,it made me want to meet her.so i did.well kindof.i went to an event she did in london with two other authors(helen walsh and clare sudbury(sp?))and she mumbled into her book and she was just like you'd think the character would be.i didn't talk to her though coz she didn't look like she wanted people to talk to her.
if you liked this book you'll probably like the books by the other two authors:brass by helen walsh and the dying of delight by clare sudbury(sp?)
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7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars "I don't want a lover, I just want to be sick", 10 Mar 2004
By H. L. Barrell "helendansette" (Birmingham, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I loved 'Cold Water' - ok, most people did. And so I should be glad that 'Sick Notes' is pretty much 'Cold Water 2' or 'Return to the Cold Water'. I am, oh, I am... but...

There's a lingering sensation whilst reading this novel(la) that I'm reading Riley's diary. It doesn't seem all that fictional. Esther used to work in a bar, and now she's had her first novel published... I think you know what I'm talking about. Whilst people smile wryly at any novelist's first work being autobiographical, one starts to panic when the second one is as well.

But I love the way Riley spins her images out at us like someone throwing quoits. She is amazing at crystalising a moment, or a fleeting picture, in an economy of words.

Unlike 'Cold Water', there seems to be more of a plot in 'Sick Notes'... which is always good (yet the timbre of Riley's writing is so magical that I got to the end of 'Cold Water' before realising that... errr... there wasn't much in the way of a plot). It was intriguing, too, to be taken into Esther's childhood, which helps to explain, perhaps, why she finds it so difficult to love. She cannot believe in Newton's love, which is such a fleeting joy... she just wants to be sick.

She wanders the city, a Mancunian flaneuse, the concrete and the clatter of the of the pavement, and the puddles round her feet all feed into the texture of the prose.

(Intriguing, however, is the news that in June we will have 'Tuesday Nights & Wednesday Mornings: A Novella & Stories' by Riley, which is apparently a novella called 'TN&WM' and some short stories. But how very odd - the description of the novella is identical to 'Sick Notes'! Is this the American version, and our cousins over the pond get some short stories flung in as well? Lucky them! Oh, help me someone, I need advice!)

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Weightless and faceless
A narrator is struggling to come to terms with... what? Life...? Love...? I'm left uncertain. Nothing happens, nothing is resolved, nothing is changed, gained, learned and so I... Read more
Published 9 months ago by A. Furse

1.0 out of 5 stars Oh dear me
This is pretentious drivel. I'm really angry that I spent money but, more importantly, time on something with so little heart. No story, no craft, no soul. Read more
Published on 12 Nov 2004

4.0 out of 5 stars Maybe even five stars..
Contrary to general belief, I actually found Sick Notes much better reading than Cold Water. I felt that Cold Water was at times a little affected, and as somebody who resides in... Read more
Published on 10 Jul 2004

3.0 out of 5 stars Duvet reading
Essentially Sick Notes is a companion piece to Riley's debut Cold Water, in that the main characters, scenarios and settings are so similar. Read more
Published on 25 Mar 2004 by A. Slatcher

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