Product Description

Michael Marshall Smith's surreal, groundbreaking, and award-winning debut which resonates with wild humour interlaced with dark recollections of an emotional minefield. Stark lives in Colour, a neighbourhood whose inhabitants like to be co-ordinated with their surroundings -- a neighbourhood where spangly purple trousers are admired by the walls of buildings as you pass them. Close by is Sound, where you mustn't make any, apart from one designated hour a day when you can scream your lungs raw. Then there's Red -- get off at Fuck Station Zero if you want to see a tactical nuclear battle recreated as a sales demonstration. Stark has friends in Red, which is just as well because Something is about to happen. And when a Something happens it's no good chanting 'Duck and cover' while cowering in a corner, because a Something is always from the past, Stark's past, and it won't go away until you face it full on.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #117033 in Books
• Published on: 1998-07-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
Excellent reviews: 'A major work indeed' Today 'Smith delivers that rarest of commodities: a genuinely new twist with a punchline of Crying Game proportions' Time Out 'A storytelling skill that can only be described as pure genius' Venue

About the Author
Michael Marshall Smith was born and raised -- itinerantly -- in the USA and the UK: his parents are academics. He has helped write two radio comedy series and a pilot TV series, and is currently working on screenplays for two feature films and the BBC adaptation of Clive Barker's Weaveworld. Only Forward was his first novel. He is distressingly young.

Customer Reviews

Absolutely stunning.
I'm not naturally a person that leaps easily to high praise or acclaim of a work of art, unless it is something special.

And this is more than that. This is in my mind one of the most understated and important novels of the last 15 years.

I also hate the usual cliches reviewers use when discussing a great book; "unputdownable" and " a real page turner" spring to mind. Yet this is a book where these cliches totally apply. As others have said, I lost sleep and missed a whole day of college to read this book. It was simply that fantastic, and I've never before or since been so entralled and captivated by a book.

Stark is a fantastic character and MMS is a master of the first person narrative. This book is also intensely funny, (you will laugh out loud), violent, beautiful, revalational, upsetting, and truely horrific. The ideas presented are phenomenal - mind boggolingly brilliant.

To describe this as Sci-fi is completely missing the point. The book is a hybrid of genres carefully woven into one another, encompassing, to name a few, elements of the Gothic, fantastical, satiric and horror traditions.

The writing is superb. Any criticism of clumsiness is misfounded. If it is ever clumsy, it is intentional to portraying Stark's human character. Re-read this and you will realise the writing is carefully crafted and beautifully sublime.

Plus, all the appliances talk! In one of the early chapters an elevator is said to be being treated by a "SWAT team of hydrolic psychotherapists" for "insinuating damaging things about the sexual proclivities of the building's interior designers..."!!

Absolute genius.

All I have to say is read this book. It will honestly immerse and affect you like no book has before!

Just gets better and better. And better. And better...
I discovered Michael Marshall Smith a few years back and i have been singing his praise from the first few pages of this book. The reason i'm writing this review is to tell you that this book endures the test of time. I have trouble re-reading books, generally because i remember the plot so vividly. But this book has been read again, and again and again. Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that the plot is easily forgotten, far from it, the plot is original and genuinely enthralling. It's just that i tend to get so lost in the rich narrative and the poignant moments that i simply do not care that i know what is about to happen. Rarely has a book moved me to tears, made me laugh and made me think, all in the same sentence.

The main character, Stark, is a wonder of creation. For once, here is a hero we can believe, a man with faults and a past, a man who will admit that he is not perfect, but has this amazing quality about him: you actually want to meet him! Smith has done such a great job of creating his characters that you honestly can associate with Stark and all the other gritty, realistic and beautiful little freaks that haunt his world.

If you need your sleep, DO NOT GET THIS BOOK. Because i assure you, if you start the book, you will not put it down and if you have to put it down you'll be thinking of ways to get back to it. It really is just that good.

I'd like to go into the plot in more depth but unfortunately it would be unfair. Too much to give away, too many secrets that i'm sure Stark would rather tell you yourself. Buy the book, get to know Stark and have fun. Then read it a second time and fall in love all over again.

And if you're wondering, yes the other books are just as good. Michael Marshall Smith is one of the best authors we have today. A gifted, imaginative and above all, entertaining writer who will surely bring mush happiness and many sleepless nights to many more people. All i can say is, roll on 'Straw Men'!!

Desert Island Books...
MMS was clearly born to write and I for one am very glad indeed that he was born. If I were to take three books to a desert island until the end of time - two of them would be by this author.

I'm not sure how many times I've picked this book up and just started to read (from any page at all), every time without fail, I'm hooked. It's the equivalent of a favourite ragdoll as a child. Comforting escapism, touching, laugh out loud funny and utterly brilliant in all aspects. Flu bomb anyone?

The man.