neiljung78's reviews
293 reviews

At times I found the book - bit like it’s narrator and protagonist could be - difficult to spend time with. The grimness of the novel within the novel is only slightly tweaked by the satiric barbs. None of the stuff Everett is writing about is supposed to be fun tho exactly. I liked the Tom Clancy joke!

I especially liked Tractor and Barley and Cock-Crows 

I loved reading bits of this aloud to myself in my empty flat.

Of course there are some stunning poems in here.

Not sure I got these poems. I liked his translations better than his original work.

I liked this! And I can be a hard marker for fantasy.

This sat better with me than some of the recent Powell’s -maybe the sense of the approaching war gave things a depth and piquancy 

Pretty good. Pretty Ellroy. For better and for worse.

Lots of good poems

 I really liked Golden Hill, I remember bits as brilliant and such a pleasure to read, the way the prose could move from playful meta to capturing just the softness of snow falling. So I was looking forward to this and it’s good, very good in parts, but maybe lacking greatness? Strip away the high concept opening (which seems kinda extra in more than one sense, unnecessary and irritating ) and this is a tender, generous literary take on Our Friends in the North of maybe the Seven Up documentaries, with a clearly Christian ethos that pokes up more than I expected. Good Christian, I think, tentative about judgement and ready to extend compassion to everyone, not afraid of hard edged reality but never quite able to respond with any hardness (or bite) of its own. It made me think of Julian Barnes or maybe Jonathan Coe, that type of English novel that’s a mix of high concept and kinda highbrow soap opera. What I did like a lot tho was the London stuff. I’m being harder on it than I expected to be!