It’s all quiet, and I am having a much-deserved night in.
So here, to save me from tidying the flat, is a plug for the latest book I read, one of those whose title and cover caught my eyes abruptly the other day, as books often do. It’s called What Was Lost, and is set in and around the Green Oaks shopping centre in Birmingham across two decades.
The story, written in a gripping, tense and yet at the same time strangely gentle way, is part character piece, part murder mystery. But more than that, it’s a poignant examination of the depersonalised existence of modern urban life, a concept I have loved in books like this and this.
Not the sort of book, based on its front and back cover, that I expected to make me laugh out loud in the bookstore on the very first page, but that’s exactly what what happened, and I was hooked from there.
I have a satisfyingly high “to read” pile, and hope that I’ll have plenty time over the summer to get stuck into it.
Morning! Thanks for the recommendation. I loved the Jon McGregor.
I saw the Anthony Gormley statues on Crosby Beach last weekend – they are amazing – brooding, yet friendly at the same time. The locals have “dressed” some of them in T shirts or skirts, there’s even one in a bikini and another with sunglasses on his head!!
Hilary
I am sure if they were in Glasgow, they’d be covered in burberry and have a traffic cone on their head…!
No, they would have been cut away with a saw, carted off in a (nicked) shopping trolley, and sold for scrap……..or am I just stereotyping?