Featured in the May issue of Yorkshire Life

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Product Description

STILL LIVES BY BRIAN PAGE
Murder, rape, robbery... and lashings of it. These are the ingredients of the ideal newspaper as far as Maurice "Morrie" Armstrong is concerned. But times are changing and a new editor has new ideas. The era of the multi-media, multi-functional, digital newsroom has arrived. Newspapers have become `brands' and readers `customers'. And, as far as the editor is concerned, dinosaurs like Morrie have no place in this new world
Relegated to writing a column about "ordinary people", Morrie's days seem numbered... until he finally discovers that ordinary people can have extraordinary lives.
The battered wife out for revenge, the sex-obsessed launderette lady, the window cleaner with a guilty secret and Barry Manilow's number one female fan... All have stories to tell.
But will that be enough to save Morrie?
Witty, poignant and often hilariously funny, Page's debut novel is based on his experience of more than 30 years in journalism, during which time he has won numerous writing awards.
Page is now a freelance editor and training consultant based in York. A former deputy editor of The Northern Echo, he denies that Morrie's story is based on his own experiences - but then he would say that, wouldn't he?

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1013353 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 204 pages

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Customer Reviews

Still Lives
I bought this book because Brain Page is a friend of mine, but it is a really good read. I would class it as chap lit, a sort of blokey equivalent of chick lit. A really good story line but not too challenging or disturbing.

Thought-provoking
We meet a journalist, Morie, who initially struck me as a kind of Rumpole of the Bailey character but pertaining to journalism. In a sense, the book was originaly written as much larger for us t really get to know the character- I had the feeling that the editing process cut out a lot of material which should have gone into it, or which was probably there originally.

We see Morie being gradually shunted out of his newspaper office, mainly by the process of technological change taking place- the transformation of his newspaper office into 'a media communication centre'. Morie has problems with alcohol, being mainly drunk in the curse of this story, and womanising along the way. So, he was certainly the sort of character I would have a lot of sympathy with. But I would have liked the opportunity to have got to know him a bit more. Other characters are introduced - Algernon, Lady Gracie, but again just sketched in rather than more extensively conveyed.........a bit like the feeling of a first installment of a television series........

By the end of the book I was a bit sad to learn that Morie's Return is not something the author intends at this stage- having made an emotional investment of this sort it seems a shame that I'm now suddenly not going to be able to follow-up on this initial encounter...........

Morie's character could have been more revealed through his ruminations, as , for instance, John Mortimer did when giving us access into Rumpole's inner thoughts/ soliloqies- in fact, more of the story ideally could have been written fromMorie's POV...........
In #Still Lives' we are taken through a series of journalistic interviews with people who are presented to us as 'ordinary'- a woman who has secretly had a lottery win,but who hides this from the reporter.........with a window cleaner who reveals that his friend commited suicide after suffering sexual trauma........but who then begs the reporter to keep this hidden as revelation would interfere with an insurance payout to the victim's bereaved wife............and others.....all of these stories are very emotional, and clearly drawn from actual events..

We are brough to the realisation that even ordinary people have facets to their lives which make them interesting, even special.......

But these stories are really subplots in the sense that while Morie is reporting these, the real conflict is going on in his office, and here his struggle becomes Everyman's, in that we are all struggling for survival and, as time goes by, likey to end up where Morie is now.......

As the story nears its climax Morie is drawn into a batte with his arch-foe the Assistant Editor, who, at the peak of the battle, collapses into unconsciousness and thus Morie is able to get his prize story- of a trip to Buckingham Palace- into print.
Also, we find that the real owner of the newspaper is a woman who has been incognito up till then- Lady Gracy- and Morie comes out on top through her offering him the job of editor.......so in the end good triumphs...........and we find ouresleves cheering for Morie...............and hoping to see him back in action for Round Two...........( or volume two, I should say).........!!!