Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #466391 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

LRB
'Riley's novels have been stylish and fresh...she's shown courage in sticking to her subject.'

The Times
'Riley writes with a Woolf-ish exactitude... A brilliant and
beautiful novel'

Times Literary Supplement
`Great verve and invention... She takes the rain that covers
Manchester like a tent and transforms it into something beautiful'

Customer Reviews

Life of Riley
I enjoyed Gwendoline Riley's first novel, Cold Water, having seen it named as one of the most promising debuts of 2002 in the Guardian magazine, but I haven't heard much about the author since, so I was intrigued to see a new novel (her third).

The novel's slim story revolves around a transatlantic romance, in which an estranged young couple reunite in a hotel. Written from the girl's point of view, she describes her on-off feelings for the boy, Joshua Spassky, while they generally hang out together.

Whereas Cold Water's prose style and slimness of plot seemed fresh and original, the reader imagining it closely followed the author's own life and character, with Joshua Spassky these attributes now make the book feel insubstantial, resembling more of a one-act play than a novel, but what Riley does she does well, and there's a definite sureness of hand in her writing.

Perfect
Rileys command of language, which is wonderful, minimal sentences and unusual images create mood and feeling within in a few pages, and her perfectly formed prose are reason enough to read this slim volume.
The story tosses and turns between hope and despair. The book is occupied not only with the vivid main characters, but all the people who gravitate around them.
A must.

Gwendoline Riley
This awful book was a complete waste of money. I hated the dull characters. It gave me great pleasure to toss it in the bin.