Monday, July 22, 2013
Redemption by Tariq Ali (Picador 1990)
Thursday, February 14, 2013
The Pale Criminal by Phillip Kerr (Viking Press 1990)
'Thanks. I don't mind if I do.' I swigged a cheekful of the clear grain alcohol thoughtfully provided by the Reichskriminaldirektor, and then took out my cigarettes. After I had lit us both I held the match aloft for a couple of seconds.
Sunday, October 07, 2012
Pet Shop Boys, Literally by Chris Heath (Da Capo Press 1990)
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
The Magic Flute by Alan Spence (Canongate Press 1990)
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Surviving The Blues: Growing Up In the Thatcher Decade edited by Joan Scanlon (Virago Press 1990)
At the end of the three years, all of the few friends I had made in York moved to London. I traipsed after them, clueless as to what my next step should be. They were going into publishing, and taking secretarial or journalist courses, or going on to drama school. I did the rounds, dossing on everybody's floor (they all seemed to have a house in London) for months. There was a particularly curious stage during the Falklands War, when I camped at No. 11 Downing Street for a week. Geoffrey Howe's son was a friend of mine at York University. At this point I was a punk, with spiky, viciously backcombed blonde hair and a tendency to sport a particular pair of very attractive blue trousers, which unfortunately I had singed at the crotch with an iron: a large triangular singe in the exact formation of pubic hair. The security police, who stood constantly on guard, never failed to inspect my person whenever I returned to No. 11. The Falklands War was hotting up, and Mr Haig, the US Secretary of State for Defence was in negotiations with Margaret Thatcher. I sauntered down Downing Street in my short-sighted haphazard way, only to be met by a pack of reporters, awaiting news about war developments from No. 10. There was a most embarrassing scene when I had to knock at No. 10 and wait for an age to be allowed in, so that I could gain access to No. 11. The cameras stopped rolling after they spotted the trousers.
(Louise Donald from the chapter, 'A Deafening Silence'.)
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin (St Martin's Paperbacks 1990)
Hyde's Club. Named after Robert Louis Stevenson's villain, Edward Hyde, the dark side of the human soul. Hyde himself was based on the city's Deacon Brodie, businessman by day, robber by night. Rebus could smell guilt and fear and rank expectation in this large room. Stale cigars and spilt whisky, splashes of sweat. And amongst it all moved Ronnie, and the question which still needed to be answered. Had Ronnie been paid to photograph the influential and the rich - without their knowing they were being snapped, of course? Or had he been freelancing, summoned here only as a punchbag, but stealthy enough to bring a hidden camera with him? The answer was perhaps unimportant. What mattered was that the owner of this place, the puppet-master of all these base desires, had killed Ronnie, had starved him of his fix and then given him some rat poison. Had sent one of his minions along to the squat to make sure it looked like a simple case of an overdose. So they had left the quality powder beside Ronnie. And to muddy the water, they had moved the body downstairs, leaving it in candlelight. Thinking the tableau shockingly effective. But by candlelight they hadn't seen the pentagram on the wall, and they hadn't meant anything by placing the body the way they had.
Rebus had made the mistake of reading too much into the situation, all along. He had blurred the picture himself, seeing connections where there were none, seeing plot and conspiracy where none existed. The real plot was so much bigger, the size of a haystack to his needle.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Snapper by Roddy Doyle (Penguin Books 1990)
Sharon sat down again. She whispered to Jimmy Sr.
- Me uterus is beginnin' to press into me bladder/ It's gettin' bigger.
Jimmy Sr turned to her.
- I don't want to hear those sort o' things, Sharon, he said. - It's not righ'.
He was blushing.
- Sorry, said Sharon.
- That's okay. Who's tha' fuckin' eejit, Darren?
- Can you not just say Eejit? said Veronica.
- That's wha' I did say! said Jimmy Sr.
Darren laughed.
Veronica gave up.
-Da, said Darren.
- No, yeh can't have a bike.
Darren got up and left the room in protest. That left Jimmy Sr and Veronica by themselves.
- There's Cliff Richard, said Jimmy Sr.
Veronica looked up.
- Yes.
- I'd never wear leather trousers, said Jimmy Sr.
Veronica laughed.
Jimmy Sr found the remote control. He'd been sitting on it.
- He's a Moonie or somethin', isn't he? he said as he stuck on the Sports Channel. - And an arse bandit.
- He's a Christian, said Veronica.
- We're all tha', Veronica, said Jimmy Sr. - Baseball! It's worse than fuckin' cricket.
He looked at it.
He looked at it.
- They're dressed up like tha' an' chewin' gum an' paint on their faces, so you're expectin' somethin' excitin', an' wha' do yeh get? Fuckin' cricket with American accents.
Jimmy Jr stuck his head round the door.
- Finished with the paper yet?
- No.
You're not even lookin' at it.
- It's my paper. I own it. Fuck off.
Jimmy Sr switched again; an ad for a gut-buster on Sky.
- Jesus!
- You've got the foulest mouth of anyone I ever knew, Veronica told hi. - Ever.
- Ah lay off, Veronica.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Bones and Silence by Reginald Hill (Dell 1990)
"You reckon?" she said, picking up her book once more. This time he glimpsed its title. Anna Karenina. Dalziel's reading was not extensive. Fiction-wise, it was restricted almost entirely to Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii, which he'd stolen from his honeymoon hotel and read circularly as if it were Finnegans Wake. But Anna Karenina he knew because of the Garbo movie. He'd been more concerned with copping a feel from the buxom lass by his side than watching the elegant shadow on the screen, but he did remember it hadn't been a bundle of laughs.
Monday, September 15, 2008
The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi (Penguin Books 1990)
I soon realized that Eleanor's main guardian and my main rival for her affection was man called Heater. He was the local roadsweeper, a grossly fat and ugly sixteen-stone Scot in a donkey jacket whom Eleanor had taken up three years ago as a cause. He came round every night he wasn't at the theatre, and sat in the flat reading Balzac in translation and giving his bitter and big-mouthed opinion on the latest production of Lear or the Ring. He knew dozens of actors, especially the left-wing ones, of whom there plenty at this political time. Heater was the only working-class person most of them had met, So he became a symbol of the masses, and consequently received tickets to first nights and to the parties afterwards, having a busier social life than Cecil Beaton. He even popped in to dress rehearsals to give his opinion as 'a man in the street'. If you didn't adore Heater - and I hated every repulsive inch of him - and listen to him as the authentic voice of the proletariat, it was easy, if you were middle class (which meant you were born a criminal, having fallen at birth), to be seen by the comrades and their sympathizers as a snob, an elitist, a hypocrite, a proto-Goebbels.
I found myself competing with Heater for Eleanor's love. If I sat too close to her he glared at me; if I touched her casually his eyes would dilate and flare like gas rings. His purpose in life was to ensure Eleanor's happiness, which was harder work than roadsweeping, since she disliked herself so intensely. Yes, Eleanor loathed herself and yet required praise, which she then never believed. But she reported it to me, saying, 'D'you know what so-and-so said this morning? He said, when he held me, that he loved the smell of me, he loved my skin and the way I made him laugh.'
When I discussed this aspect of Eleanor with my adviser, Jamilla, she didn't let me down. 'Christ, Creamy Fire Eater, you one hundred per cent total prat, that's exactly what they're like, these people, actresses and such-like vain fools. The world burns and they comb their eyebrows. Or they try and put the burning world on the stage. It never occurs to them to dowse the flames. What are you getting into?'