A man gets up earlier & earlier each day, dresses in the dark, makes his coffee & lights the fire with a box of matches. Then he rummages through the thoughts that crowd his head & preoccupy him. Here is mid-life domesticated man, whose thoughts veer brilliantly from love & marriage, to firelighters & suicide, in the twinkling of an eye. This is Baker at his best, humorous & observant, revealing the underlying truths about the ephemerality of life, the joy of small things, the darkness just the other side of everyday life
- all human life in a box of matches.
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Here is Nicholson Baker at his obsessive-compulsive best, with humour & observation to die for, but with underlying truths & sadness about the ephemerality of life, the joy of small things, the darkness which is just the other side of everyday life
- all human life in a box of matches. This book gets at the real meaning of 'the examined life', & it's unmistakably serious, but also side-splittingly funny.' It is 4.32 am...' most chapters start similarly... A man gets up earlier & earlier each day, dresses in the dark, makes his coffee & lights the fire with a box of matches, also in the dark, feeling his way around, through his silent house, where wife & children sleep, & then rummages through the thoughts which crowd his head & preoccupy him. Meanwhile outside, there's snow on the ground, Greta the duck is asleep in her dog kennel with a rug thrown over it, but that doesn't stop her bowl of water freezing each night. This is mid-life man, domesticated but still an alien creature, whose thoughts veer brilliantly from love & marriage, to firelighters & suicide, from peeing in the dark to ant-farms in the twinkling of an eye. This is virtuoso writing, idiosyncratic, brilliant, funny & touching. Nicholson Baker back on MEZZANINE form for a new generation of readers.
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Lem Gulliver (25, maths teacher), can't seem to leave home. His mother (46, courtroom artist) & step-father (49, AA patrol man), make no secret of the fact that he's become a cuckoo in the nest but since Dawn (27, animal rights activist) left him for a dog trainer, Lem has returned to his natural state of emotional drift. He can't understand how the people around him manage the plot of a grown-up life -careers, mortgages, marriages, homes, friends. With no girlfriend, no place of his own, no ambition & no prospects, the only real direction in his life seem to be the tracks of the Victoria line which take him daily to work. There, the likes of Emily, Nokia, Jason & Kemal stubbornly resist his efforts to make the Fibonacci code fun. One day in June, Lem gets the distinct feeling that he is unravelling; he needs to take control of his life & change it radically before he reaches the end of the line, but who will show him the way?

Original, inventive & wry, Sabrina Broadbent's second novel is a vision of uncertainty, the unsaid & the untouched; a place where people lose their bearings & ultimately, a place of realignment. A Boy's Guide to Track & Field starts at Walthamstow & travels southbound towards Brixton, & the reader is swept along with Lem in a review of the past which gradually accelerates into the present.

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Growing up in rural Yorkshire in the 1940s & 50s, Terry Wilson spent his school days hunting down Just William books, cutting ...

As the 1960's drew to a close, parents across Britain raised a curious eyebrow as their long-haired children suddenly returned home with shaven heads, sporting Levi's jeans & vicious looking army boots, pleading for three quid to buy a Harrington jacket from the market. The skinhead was born & a youth culture stronger & more widespread than any other, before or since, took Britain by storm. Marting King was one of them. Boys & girls alike embraced this new working-class fashion & music
- the West Indian reggae sounds of Blue Beat & the strong sense of identity they fostered. For a couple of summers the media would have it that England was under seige, when the young skins paraded at seaside resorts on bank holidays & later on terraces at nearly every football ground acros the country. With his passion for Chelsea FC & their growing reputation as the skinhead club forming a backdrop, King artfully & humorously describes the heady mix of pleasures which were all part of life as a teenager growing up in working-class south London in the late 60's
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Their love has survived the test of time. But can it survive fate?

America, 1772. It is only a few years before the war of

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Their love has survived time, but can they survive fate?

1772
- the eve of the American revolution. In Boston, men lie


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12 year old Joel lives with his father in the cold northern part of Sweden. At night he often sneaks out of his father's house to look for a lonely dog he has seen from his window. On the bridge across the icy river he starts a secret society & has adventures. But one night he discovers that his father's bed is also empty & will have to come terms with his father's new-found love. The harsh reality of Joel's world comes vividly to life & leaves the reader spellbound. ...

12 year old Joel lives with his father in the cold northern part of Sweden. At night he often sneaks out of his father's house to look for a lonely dog he has seen from his window. On the bridge across the icy river he starts a secret society & has adventures. But one night he discovers that his father's bed is also empty & will have to come terms with his father's new-found love. The harsh reality of Joel's world comes vividly to life & leaves the reader spellbound. ...