Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #848920 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-20
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Customer Reviews

Totally gripping
I picked this book up while on holiday - someone had left it behind at the rented holiday cottage I was staying at. I glanced at the first couple of pages, and was hooked. I read the whole book in a day, which is very rare for me these days. This is a very moving book, beautifully written. One thing I loved was the description of the songs that this fictional band perform - Joel Lane described them so well that I really wanted to hear them!

Wow, what a beautiful, beautiful book.
I really liked the Lane short stories that i'd read, so when I heard he'd written a novel I was very excited. Then I realized it was about a rock band. The only thing I hate more than fiction about writers is fiction about rock musicians, they both seem equally narcissistic, I don't know why, maybe because all writers are frustrated rock musicians. Anyway I bought the book and it blew me away. Right from the start. This is such a wonderful book. Joel Lane is the antidote to any of the trendy, ironic, cold-hearted, clever-clever writing that seems to be everywhere. His writing is deeply felt; romantic but real.I can't tell you how much I love this book.

Devastatingly good novel
Two of the reader-reviewers... get hold of the wrong end of the stick... This is not a non-fiction account of life on the road with a struggling indie band. It's a novel, for ****'s sake. You know, fiction. That stuff they make up. And it's damn good fiction. The positive reader-reviews are spot on: it's a perceptive and often dark trawl through the psyche, as well as through the grimmer parts of the West Midlands. It's also extremely funny, in parts. One of the best novels published in the UK as the 20th century drew to a close. I'm looking forward to Lane's next novel.