London Fictions - Couverture souple

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1907869662 ISBN 13 : 9781907869662

Editeur : Five Leaves Publications, 2013

A propos du livre

Revue de presse

The collection offers a compelling journey through time and place. Ranging across the cityscape, the essays feature the drawing rooms of the now-departed Hampstead liberals, through to benches in Bloomsbury squares, the neon lights reflected in puddles along grimy Soho alleys and the clogged pavements of the West End. It highlights the East End slums at the end of Queen Victoria's reign and the mixed-class streets of a south London suburb in 2012. --Camden Review

The introduction to this new book immediately got our attention: 'We asked a selection of contemporary Londonists, the term is coming once more into fashion but is originally Marcus Fall's from 1880...'. Well, blimey. The 26 contemporary Londonists', and most do have strong London connections, were each asked to critique a London-based novel. Their choices certainly intrigue. Dickens is missed entirely, and the list also steers clear of that quartet of modern sages and visionaries of the city, J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair . Also absent are Conrad, Amis, Carter, Gaiman and Self. As the Afterword says, the editors make no claims to comprehensiveness, instead relying on the individual enthusiasms of the contributors. The resulting list, then, is far more interesting than another slog through the usual suspects. A few old favourites do reel us in (Conan Doyle, Virginia Woolf, Patrick Hamilton), but then we re drawn to a dozen less-familiar authors such as Pamela Hansford Johnson and Thomas Burke. We begin with George Gissing's The Nether World and end with what seems to be its abbreviation, NW by Zadie Smith. The contributors are also well chosen. Sarah Wise tackles A Child of the Jago, Rachel Lichtenstein analyses Simon Blumenfeld's Jew Boy, Cathi Unsworth takes on The L-Shaped Room... Some writers really tubthump their choice, others are more critical. Andrew Lane's appraisal of The Sign of Four, for example, imagines Conan Doyle piecing the action together from a London gazetteer, rather than drawing on any first-hand knowledge of the capital's streets. All in all, this is a surprising and approachable collection, which can be enjoyed by a general audience as well as literary types. The mix of familiar and not-so-familiar sets it apart from the numerous other London anthologies from recent years. Our reading list just got several novels longer, and the application of the word Londonist just got broader. --The Londonist

Présentation de l'éditeur

London Fictions is a book about London, real and imagined. Two dozen contemporary writers, from Cathi Unsworth to Courttia Newland, reflect on some of the novelists and the novels that have helped define the modern city, from George Gissing to Zadie Smith, Hangover Square to Brick Lane. It is a book about East End boys and West End girls, bed-sit land and dockland, the homeless and the homesick, immigrants and emigrants. All human life is here high-minded Hampstead and boozy Fitzrovia, the Jewish East End, intellectual Bloomsbury and Chinese Limehouse, Black London, Asian London, Irish London, Gay London... Each essay is followed by an epilogue about the area each novel has covered - what has changed since the novel, and what has not.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Five Leaves Publications
• Date d'édition: 2013
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1907869662
• ISBN 13: 9781907869662
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 280
• Éditeur: Whitehead Andrew, White Jerry
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible