Skin Lane - Softcover

Neil Bartlett

4.06

362 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852429194 ISBN 13: 9781852429195

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2007

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2007 At 47, Mr. F?s working life on London?s Skin Lane is one governed by calm, precision and routine. So when he starts to have frightening, recurring nightmares, he does his best to ignore them. The images that appear in his dream are disturbing ? Mr. F can't for the life of him think where they have come from. After all, he's a perfectly ordinary middle-aged man. As London?s crooked backstreets begin to swelter in the long, hot summer of 1967, Mr. F?s nightmare becomes an obsession. A chance encounter adds a face to the body that nightly haunts him, and the torments of his sweat-drenched nights lead him ? and the reader ? deeper into a terrifying labyrinth of rage, desire and shame. Part fairy-tale, part compelling evocation of a now-lost London, Neil Bartlett's long-awaited third novel is his fiercest piece of writing yet: cruel, erotic, and tender.

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About the Author:

Born in 1958, Neil Bartlett has spent twenty-five years at the cutting edge of British gay culture. His ground-breaking study of Oscar Wilde, Who Was That Man? paved the way for a queer re-imagining of history ; his first novel, Ready To Catch Him Should He Fall, was voted Capital Gay Book of The Year; his second, Mr Clive and Mr Page, was nominated for the Whitbread Prize. Both have since been translated into five European languages. Listing him as one of the country's fifty most significant gay cultural figures, the Independent said "Brilliant,beautiful, mischievous; few men can match Bartlett for the breadth of his exploration of gay sensibility". He also works as a director, and in 2000 was awarded an OBE for services to the theatre.

Review:

?Neil Bartlett is a protean polymath of a creator, ceaselessly inventing new artistic worlds - and then conquering them. Skin Lane is a fiendishly taut little psycho-shocker that recalls Simenon at his most hardboiled and Highsmith at her creepiest. It made the hairs rise on the back of my neck, and I still can't get them down * Will Self * 't get them down again? Will Self ?A modern day fairy tale dripping with the tension of desire and repression that lingers long in the memory after the final page has been turned. The journey may not be comfortable but it is certainly compelling? Attitude ?Intense, erotic and highly theatrical, with a shocking climax and, as with all Bartlett?s work, a complex take on our history? Gay Times ?With Skin Lane, Bartlett further demonstrates his skills as a creative polymath of the highest order? Dazed & Confused ?Charting the outer limits of desire and personal rejection with compassion, made all the more striking because of the unsparing clarity of Bartlett?s vision, Skin Lane pulls off the triple whammy of being shocking, sexy and tenderly humane? Metro ?Claustrophobic and tense... Bartlett is an expert in the stories we tell ourselves and why we tell them? Time Out ?A beautiful book; well-proportioned with supple, sensuous text and an aching raw heart at its core? Aesthetica ?A superb writer... a grisly story that?s beautifully constructed and evocatively written? What?s On In London ?Bartlett is a storyteller well aware of how to exert control over his audience. He wastes little time before demonstrating that he can, in a moment, stop your heart, or break it; possibly even, you suspect, rip it out and show it to you... Skin Lane welds itself to your hands from first to last. Textured, teeming with menace and, at the end, deeply moving, it is an extremely fine piece of writing? The Times ?Brilliantly eerie... constantly surprising... captures vividly the atmosphere of the changing London of the 60s... But it?s in his depiction of a specific kind of helpless and fearful love that Bartlett excels? Guardian ?Original, disturbing... beautifully written, this is an always fascinating work? Literary Review British author Bartlett (Mr. Clive and Mr. Page) deserves to win acclaim on this side of the Atlantic for this complex and rich journey into the heart of a lonely man, framed as a bedtime story. . . . This remarkable novel's image and characters will linger long in the reader's memory * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *

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