Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67222 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-06
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The death of homeless man Charlie Buck is unremarkable to everyone except the few passers-by who witness his drunken--and apparently voluntary--fall beneath a speeding lorry. No loved ones or friends attend his last breaths in hospital--his possessions amount to a National Insurance card, a digital watch and a newspaper obituary for a dead composer. But Charlie was a person. He had a wife and a son, his own set of dreams and personal demons, a biography no more and no less studded with dramas, defeats and victories than anyone else's.

This is the mission of Rumours of a Hurricane, Tim Lott's second novel: to chart the life of a single man, revealing it to be remarkable in its ordinariness and epic within its narrow confines. The backdrop to Charlie's tragic saga is the relentlessly changing Britain of the 1980s, a nation twisted by greed and discontent. History weaves gracefully in and out of the tale, its hero riding high as he buys his own council flat and invests in the stock market; laid low as the great storms and the recession hit his home and his business. But Lott's grasp of the recent past is by no means his most impressive talent--what dazzles on every page is his powerful grasp of the human soul and his ability to turn harsh truths into some truly fascinating fiction. Like Lott's first novel White City Blue, this is an uncompromising book, one whose messages we ignore at our peril. --Matthew Baylis

Jim Crace
"Tim Lott's Rumours of a Hurricane is the tender, disquieting autopsy of an unsophisticated and commonplace marriage. What a risky subject! But, also what a touching, honest and courageous book!"

Synopsis
Tragic and hilarious in equal measure, Tim Lott's story of Charlie and Maureen Buck's ailing marriage and their climb up (and down) the social ladder during the 1980s is a wonderfully honest portrait of ordinary people living through an extraordinary time. Steeped in the decade's cataclysmic events, packed with the crimes and misdemeanours we visit on each another, "Rumours of a Hurricane" is a powerful tale of change, how we face it - and how we don't. 'An outstanding comic novel. Places the 1980s under sceptical and merciless scrutiny' - "Literary Review".

Customer Reviews

Page turning, brilliant evocation of the Thatcher Years
This book engages immediately. I read it within twenty-fours hours as 'can't put-it-down' read. Being a young working mother in the nineteen eighties I was proably too busy to remember the era from a sociological point of view, but Tim brought it all back with amazing accuracy. Yes - we had a Goblin Teasmade! It was not just the anecdotal references that caught the imagination. His verdict on the boom-and-bust of the times was very accurately portrayed. I was so sorry to say goodbye to the characters. I have also enjoyed White City Blues in the past. Tim Lott is one of our best modern writers and there not a boring minute in Rumours of a Hurricane. Brilliant. Read it.

Exceptional
This book is a beautifully written account of very ordinary people, going through their lives in the midst of what was always known in my house as 'The Thatcher Terror'. I'd never read any of Tim Lott's novels before, and I was genuinely surprised at the skill and sensitivity with which he painted his characters. Journalists aren't exactly known for their subtlety and sensitivity...
It's a terribly moving, but also terribly angry story, which only served to remind me of just how destructive and turbulent a time the 80s really were for hundreds of thousands of people in this country. Thatcher's presence - and Lott's own politics - are felt, albeit subtly, throughout the novel, without detracting from the plot in any noticeable way. I haven't enjoyed a novel this much for a very long time, and I would recommend it to anyone.
Oh, and don't be put off (as I almost was) by the fact that the cover carries a glowing recommendation from that scourge of society Tony Parsons. You'll regret it if you do.

Best novel I've read for ages
This is an excellent novel, with an interesting, believable storyline and exceptionally well observed characters. The moments and situations of life described by Lott are so perfectly drawn it's almmost painful, and you loyalties are truly split between a sensible response and one of sheer pity for a person chewed up by society. A much more mature novel than White City Blue, which I also enjoyed, but this one has far more depth. I look forward to seeing it on A level syllabi in years to come...