Rumours of a Hurricane
1 journaler for this copy...
(20/11/06) Aaaahhh, sublime, painful, funny...why isn't Lott a mega star! Full review to follow.
The title being part of a famous quote from Michael Fish on the night before the 1997 hurricanes, ‘Michael Fish had said that the rumours of a hurricane were nothing to worry about’.
The other ‘hurricanes’ that Charlie Buck didn’t see coming were the sexual and industrial revolutions of the Thatcher era; the end of blue collar jobs-for-life, the end of certainty, the beginning of this new era of choices.... It was very sad to see the unravelling of his life, although we knew from the beginning that he was doomed, somehow this didn’t soften the blow of the tragedy. Some very funny set-pieces helped lighten what could have been pure unrelenting sentimentality.
Towards the end, a failed marriage, spirally business costs and negative equity, Charlie looks to his chancer younger brother Tommy for a loan, ‘It’s not me, is it? Suddenly along came all these choices. I mean it would have been different twenty years ago...but things don’t stay the same. Everything’s changed, mate. It’s a different world.’
This is another brilliant bitter-sweet novel from Tim Lott who’s fast becoming my favourite writer – he writes from the heart from a place and time that I recognise; being a man in West London and the ‘burbs in the 1980’s and 90’s.
The title being part of a famous quote from Michael Fish on the night before the 1997 hurricanes, ‘Michael Fish had said that the rumours of a hurricane were nothing to worry about’.
The other ‘hurricanes’ that Charlie Buck didn’t see coming were the sexual and industrial revolutions of the Thatcher era; the end of blue collar jobs-for-life, the end of certainty, the beginning of this new era of choices.... It was very sad to see the unravelling of his life, although we knew from the beginning that he was doomed, somehow this didn’t soften the blow of the tragedy. Some very funny set-pieces helped lighten what could have been pure unrelenting sentimentality.
Towards the end, a failed marriage, spirally business costs and negative equity, Charlie looks to his chancer younger brother Tommy for a loan, ‘It’s not me, is it? Suddenly along came all these choices. I mean it would have been different twenty years ago...but things don’t stay the same. Everything’s changed, mate. It’s a different world.’
This is another brilliant bitter-sweet novel from Tim Lott who’s fast becoming my favourite writer – he writes from the heart from a place and time that I recognise; being a man in West London and the ‘burbs in the 1980’s and 90’s.
