I’m listening to the audiobook after meeting the reader, Christopher Ecclestone, on a flight. As a Man U fan and a northerner, he brings this book to life. It’s a very good listen. Highly recommended.
I can imagine it working better read – especially when read by Eccleston, who's a great choice – with the rhythm and repetition becoming almost hypnotic.
The Snow. The Snow. The Rattling. The Lights, dim. The Snow. Black Shapes. Grey Shapes. Coughing. Propellers splutter with influenza. The Snow. The Snow.
Am I close?
Being serious, I Iike David Peace. I'll need to get hold of that.
Yeah, his style is punishing but generally rewarding. I think Red or Dead is a masterpiece, but like Heller's Something Happened, I can't imagine wanting to read it again. Too painful. I finished the Red Riding books, but by the end felt almost sickened.
Haven't got to this yet but have a copy on the shelf. I'd really recommend Peace's GB84 as a book on a subject that suits his style perfectly (the miner's strike). Exceptionally bleak, but beautiful
I’ve never tried the Red Riding series, full-blown crime novels aren’t really my bag, though any West Yorkshire representation in literature is always welcome
I loved the first in the series, but what ground me down - and I really did feel sickened towards the end - wasn't the style, with was the relentless grimness of the content. It was like endlessly wading through a sewer.
Peace’s characteristic style – simple vocabulary and imagery, continuous repetition – worked brilliantly in Red or Dead, creating a brilliant portrait of obsession reminiscent of Joseph Heller’s manic Something Happened.
In the first 200 pages, which cover the crash and the immediate aftermath, the repetition feels almost Homeric, like folklore being handed down by fireside, capturing the confusion and numbing horror in a really moving way.
...As the action shifts back to Manchester – the families, the funerals, the grief and the resumption of football – the use of that same stylistic approach seemed to me jarring and, eventually, flattening to the emotional component of a story of this magnitude.
Comments
Am I close?
Being serious, I Iike David Peace. I'll need to get hold of that.
I'm totally with you on Red or Dead and so glad someone agrees - have felt on an island about it forever.
I thought it was astonishing. Shankly the perfect vehicle for his style. One of the most affecting books I've read.
So many football folk hated it so vociferously!
I far prefer it to the Clough pastiche, which I also love fwiw.
But…
And after that, the book well… tails off. Which seems like an extraordinary thing given the events covered and FA Cup final as a bookend to the story.