Bleeding London - Softcover

Geoff Nicholson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0575063513 ISBN 13: 9780575063518

Publisher: Orion Books Limited, 1997

Synopsis

The city of London appears as a character in this humorous novel. It is portrayed almost like a human body, displaying signs of renewal and decay, with a clogged digestive tract, bottlenecks and congestion. It is a city of obsessives, of insouciant sadists, of innocents. It is bleeding London.

About this title

About the Author

Educated at Cambridge. Was a bookseller before becoming a full-time writer.

From Kirkus Reviews

The prolific Nicholson's (Footsucker, 1996, etc.) 11th novel is a savagely funny, wayward, loving celebration of London's enchantments and strangeness. The power of an ancient city to seduce is demonstrated in the lives of three vividly particularized characters: Mick, a bright, laconic tough from Sheffield who has come to London seeking revenge on a group of men who, he believes, raped his stripper girlfriend; Judy, a young woman of mixed parentage (her father is Japanese, her mother British) attempting to make this city she obsessively loves her own; and Stuart, the urbane, self-satisfied head of an agency that offers an exotic array of walking tours. Anxious to find some new way to demonstrate his idiosyncratic mastery of London, Stuart hits on the idea of walking every one of its streets, a project that--if he walks ten miles a day, five days a week--should take some three years. Mick, meanwhile, who at first has a provincial's undisguised dislike and distrust of the vast, chaotic city, finds himself disturbed and intrigued by it as he goes in search of his miscreants. These parallel quests, each increasingly quixotic, allow Nicholson to poke satiric fun at London's citizens, catalogue some lively fragments of its history and geography, and anatomize the ways in which we make a city our own. In the end, Mick finds himself liberated by the possibilities of life in the city; Stuart, made arrogant by his supposed mastery of it, is grimly humbled; and Judy hits upon a weirdly transcendent way of making herself permanently one with it. The plot takes a while to build up speed, and the unfiltered blizzard of facts about London is sometimes dizzying, but Nicholson's satirical eye, his obvious love of the city, and his skill at fielding odd, convincing characters overcome any problems. A delightful fiction, and a wonderfully exasperated love letter to a great city. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion Books Limited
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0575063513
• ISBN 13: 9780575063518
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1