Product Description

A literary thriller in which, in a sense, the London Underground becomes the central character. Someone is pushing women under trains, and a Polish immigrant who works at a north London station - a loner with a complicated past and a secret fear of the dark - is determined to stop the killings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #286059 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Already lauded for his vivid collections of poetry and short stories, Tobias Hill makes the move to full-length novel with Underground and instantly establishes himself as one of Britain's most exciting young novelists. London Underground worker Casimir is jolted out of his somnambulant routine when he realises, from the evidence on his monitor, that a young woman's supposed accident or suicide attempt is in fact attempted murder. At the same time he becomes particularly obsessed by fleeting glimpses of Walkmaned tube dweller Alice, whose otherworldly beauty haunts the tunnels. Like Neil Bartlett, Hill uses London's hidden history to explore London's hidden present and like Bartlett he does it through the eyes of an outsider. The story unfolds in counterpoint to the childlike telling of Casimir's troubled childhood in Poland, his own underground life, with which he's slowly forced to come to terms. Hill may stuff his book with tubespotter detail about London's fascinating subterranean network--its hidden passages, makeshift dwellings, locked and forgotten stations--but, far from being just another feelgood novel for city commuters and Time Out addicts, Underground is a rich, multi-layered novel that reaches far beyond the end of the Northern line. --Alan Stewart

Customer Reviews

A novel that gets under the skin as well as the city.
This is what British fiction should be about. Set in the present day, written about what matters; real subjects and real people. Casimir is an imigrant worker on the London Underground, cut off from his own country and family. He gets drawn into the life of a homeless girl who lives on abandoned Underground stations, and discovers a world which is even darker than his own. This is really good writing, the real thing. Yes there are flaws, but better big, dark and flawed than small, pale and perfect; the fate of so much British fiction today. Hill shows that there is still much to write about here - and the writers to do it.

"Quiet waters break the river's banks"
"An engrossing, fast-paced thriller," according to an excerpt from a review in The Times reproduced on the front jacket of this book. I have to disagree. Underground is, in fact, a beautifully slowly-paced psychological examination of fear, lust and betrayal. The novel is slow but excrutiatingly suspenseful and exceptionally well-crafted with succint description and strong, visual imagery. The childhood chapters are certainly significantly different in tone from the present sections set in the tunnels of the London Underground and perhaps this is what has disturbed some readers, but in my opinion this only underlines the effect on Casimir of his father's and mother's betrayals - how fundamentally they have altered him as a person. Some reviewers have commented that they felt like they were reading two different novels and perhaps this is fair comment - Casimir-past and Casimir-present are essentially two different people. I am surprised that so many other reviewers felt the childhood chapters dragged - try reading the Underground chapters independently and they would feel empty and shallow - it is the childhood sections that provide the layers and complexity to Casimir's personality and circumstances. As is said several times in the novel "still waters run deep" or "quiet waters break the river's banks" and this serves to describe not only Casimir but the novel itself (and, I suspect, Tobias Hill). Combining "literature" and "genre" together in the same novel is always difficult but I think Tobias Hill has handled it well. Marketing this book as a "fast-paced thriller" does a disservice both to the readers, by encouraging false expectation, and the author, by encouraging the wrong kind of readers (although it probably helps to sell more novels).This is a beautiful and thought-provoking novel by an exceptionally talented young writer. If you want a fast-paced thriller, read John Grisham. If you want imagery that makes you shiver with its beauty and emotions that haunt you long into the night, read Tobias Hill.

A damn fine gripping novel
I was really transported by this novel - backwards and forwards between Poland in the past and an unknown world beneath the London underground in the present. I have never been to Poland and I live in London but oddly enough the London scenes felt the most strange. I now feel thrilled everytime I go down into the tube imagining the life going on around and below me. I highly recommend it - I really couldn't put it down and have given copies to all my friends.