Confession - I'm addicted. I haven't been this addicted for weeks. Since ploughing through all five series of Breaking Bad in a fast and furious few weeks recovering from a broken shoulder. So what's got itself lodged and circulating under my skin, spinning around like a runaway tube train? Barry Cain's Wet Dreams Dry Lives
What a piece of work. A cat's cradle of closets and skeletons, secrets and affairs, families and fortunes. A 'just one more chapter' read (where one more chapter becomes another chapter - and repeat), looping through various levels of hell, heaven and dark heartbreaks. A perspective shifting, line blurring blast of a book - twinkling and teasing with sex, drugs and shock 'n' roll
A story about an infatuation that leads to madness. About a man murdering his father and his son before killing himself. About the joys and horrors of sex. About jealousy and hate and love and depravity. About the sadness of time and the hunger for survival. About gangsters and perverts and condos in Los Angeles. About the desire for fame eroded by the desire for drugs. About decapitation. About dreams coming true and schemes to untie them. Or is it…? '
Incredibly this is Barry's first novel, but, comes free of the Bambi-steps and unsteady treading typical of yer usual debut volumes. Instead it pings along with the upswing and spring of Gene Kelly (or Alex Droog) singing in the rain, and is written so exquisitely you're almost re-reading each line as you soak in every sentence .....
If you're a recovering Badaddict looking for something to fill the hole left by BB. Dig in here, It's yours for just £1.90.
Spotters badge awarded for pegging all the pop culture references contained within the WDDL pages
From the non-fiction section - let the Gentle Author take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London, stopping off to view parks, desire paths, people and byways, by way of the London Album..
Parked up and posting on a daily basis over at Spitalfields Life, the Gentle Authors has curated a compendium of the capital from 600 (mostly unseen and unpublished) pictures: Elizabethan graffiti in the Tower of London, Victorian Spitalfields nippers, Bob Mazzer's London Underground photographs - and hang on, who's this popping up amongst the Pellicci portraits...(full story here, along with a dandy Kevin Rowland portrait)
My family were all born and bred Londoners, and I may be an Essex boy now, but was actually born in Kentish Town, before migrating east with my parents. Both mum and dad have been gone for some years now,so it's an honour and a privilege to appear as one of the many lives in the London Album...
2 comments:
Speaking as a meatballs connoisseur, please tell me what it is that, for you, makes them so glorious; even better, email me their recipe (if they'll part company with it!).
The Pellicci meatballs are creamy, meaty - with a gorgeous herb and tomato tang. They're also an occasional special absent from the regular menu, so I get a call up whenever they're on..
The recipe's a secret, but this is close as you'll get...
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