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    Capital
    Capital
    Capital
    Audiobook17 hours

    Capital

    Written by John Lanchester

    Narrated by Colin Mace

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Hailed by the New York Times as an ''elegant and wonderfully witty writer,'' John Lanchester received the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Betty Trask Prize for his critically acclaimed debut, The Debt to Pleasure. In Capital, it's 2008, the height of the financial crisis, and someone is sending anonymous postcards to the affluent residents of Pepys Road, London. The cards read simply, ''We want what you have,'' leaving the recipients asking, Who's behind the strange mailings, and to what lengths will they go to get what they want?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateSep 14, 2012
    ISBN9781470328382
    Capital
    Author

    John Lanchester

    John Lanchester is a British journalist and novelist. His critically-acclaimed first novel, The Debt to Pleasure, won the Whitbread First Novel Award.

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    Reviews for Capital

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    • 5/5
      Capital by John Lanchester - very good

      This was everything that One Week in December (Sebastian Faulks) wasn't. A similar premise: we're following the lives of a selection of Londoners from December 2007 through to August 2008. In this case we're following the residents of an affluent suburban street: Pepys Road. We're introduced to them and watch their lives as the economic meltdown commences. During this time, they're also all in receipt of anonymous postcards with the message "We want what you have".

      All the characters are well written and mostly empathetic. I certainly wanted to know what happened to them and even after the finishing the book, I wondered about various outcomes and what would have happened next. Ok, some of them are stock characters: the Pakistani family that run the corner shop, the wealthy banker and his horrible wife, pretty nanny & small children, the Polish builder, the little old lady etc etc. But I wanted to know if Zbigniew would manage to salvage his nest egg & go home to Poland, if Quentina would get a visa, if the horrible Arabella would get her cum-uppance.

      Secondary was the mystery of the postcards and who & why they were being sent. I kind of guessed, but not until close to the end of the book was I partially proved right.

      One thing: I was surprised there wasn't more about the financial side of things. When I heard John Lanchester speak at the EdBookFest last year, I got the impression there was more to the book. He mentioned having done so much research that he'd had to write a second, factual, book (Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay) about what happened and why, so I expected there to be more included in this book. Having said that, after Sebastian Faulks 'Janet & John do hedge fund management' (thanks again to Pauline for that one!) it's probably for the best.

      Well worth reading.
    • 2/5
      adult fiction; economic collapse as viewed from the perspectives of varied London citizens living in a well-to-do suburb. Somewhat interesting but I have too much else to read at the moment; may return to it later but not likely.
    • 5/5
      This was a fascinating read. For reasons that would be spoilery, I can't quite explain why it's biggest downfall should, but does not, matter at all. I don't know when I've ever been so engaged with the characters in a novel before. I'm sorry John Lanchester hasn't written more novels but now, having checked up on him via the internet, I'm off to read the memoir he wrote about his mother who he learned only after her death was a runaway nun who lived invented a new life for herself.
    • 4/5
      For me, the beginning was the weakest part - at times it felt as if the author had accidentally imbibed too much Marxist literary theory and was rather laboriously situating the characters in their socio-economic context. My first impression was also that many of the characters were mildly stereotypical, generally unsympathetic and were going to be used to deliver a thinly veiled lecture on the evils of capitalism and the modern world generally. But glad to say that it picked up considerably after that and confounded my expectations. So if the first few chapters feel a bit a like painting by numbers, stick with it - it gets a lot more interesting about a quarter of the way in and after that, I found it hard to put down.
    • 2/5
      The white policeman was a man who gave an impression of heaviness. It wasn't that he was fat, but he sagged as if with a moral or psychic burden; his shoulders sagged, his eyes sagged, his suit sagged and he sat sagged in his chair, as if his disappointments with the world were bearing down on him.

      2.0772 stars

      I had hoped for so much more. The Debt Crisis and War on Terror through a sketch by Boz, only it wasn't. Disparate threads elucidating nothing, cue the (Jonathan) Coe feel goodish ending. Damn the weaselly people.
    • 3/5
      Life on the average London street just before the banking collapse. All human life is here! Except...My husband and I were having a very lefty liberal conversation about who claims the right to speak for who in societal discourse (yeah, we're fun like that). And the conclusion we came to is, for too long, white middle class straight people have claimed the right to speak for a whole host of "others", rather than just let those "others" have a platform to speak for themselves. And that maybe, slowly, that is changing. This book is relevant to that debate because, as good as it is, it is essentially a white, middle class bloke claiming to know what it's like being a several different black African characters, one of whom is an asylum-seeker, various members of a British muslim family suspected of terrorism offences, a Polish builder and a Hungarian nanny, as well as an assortment of others British characters. Yes! That's an author's job I know, but something about this supposedly virtuoso display of walking in other's shoes just didn't sit comfortably with me. Does he really know how it feels to be a muslim woman, happily playing with your child, when riot police burst into your house? Did he speak to anyone who had experienced that themselves, or did he just think that as an author, he would be able to imagine it? It's not a bad book, and I really don't have any answers to the questions of who should be allowed to write about what (surely everyone and everything, but the reality is, only certain people's version gets listened to), but that thought did keep occurring to me as I read this.
    • 4/5
      While never really predictable, it becomes clear that the sympathies are with those recently arrived in London. Good characters and insights into human nature, but the overlaps and wrappings of the disparate threads seemed contrived. An enjoyable read nevertheless, as the fictional Pepys Road stands in for many streets in London where people from different walks of life lead their lives.
    • 4/5
      I loved this big generous soap opera of a book, the loosely interlinked stories of a diverse cross section of London residents. They are mostly connected by a postcard related mystery but I'd advise readers not to set too much store by that element of the book: it would stand without it, and the resolution of it fel like an afterthought. Better to concentrate on the superb characterisation, the intelligence, the humour and the insight. I was particularly impressed by the depiction of Rohinka's relationship with her overbearing mother in law, in which her own intelligence was being used against her. And often the bits where nothing much was happening - like Roger's walk late on in the book - were some of the most enjoyable to read. As where an author has done the hard work building up a character layer on layer, like climbing up a mountain, and having reached the peak can relax a bit and enjoy the view.There were minor things that niggled me - like the way some traditional stereotypes got gleefully reinforced (greedy bankers) where others were strenuously dismantled (immigrants). I sometimes felt like a very woke finger was being wagged at me in case I happened to be Nigel Farage or something. But mainly my issue with this book was the way it finished - with rather less fanfare than I was expecting. I'd liken my reading experience to holding one end of a skipping rope, twirling it faster and faster and being quite dazzled by the speed and the smoothness of the rope as it spins, and just when you think you could go on like this for ever and never get bored, you notice the line has gone a bit slack. A minute or two later you check the other end and find the other person has dropped their end and gone home.
    • 4/5
      The fact that I had no trouble finishing this 577 page novel is a testament to something....an enticing plot, I guess, although the plot is actually rather predictable! Actually just about everything in this book is predictable. The characters are really all very much stereotypes, and each of the multiple plot lines follows a well-signposted track. I suppose it was the insight into 21st century London that interested me most. I enjoyed the comparison between the very different sets of residents that live in one London street...the cashed-up professionals moving into an area that had been the domain of a very different class in years gone by. That's very much a phenomenon in the city where I live too. After recently hearing that Polish was the second most commonly spoken language in the UK, I was also interested to see British life through the Polish eyes of one of the main characters. I put this on my 'to be read' list after I heard the author interviewed on a BBC book program and although I don't regret that move, neither will I be looking for more of Lanchester's works
    • 5/5
      A great big fat Brit novel, opening with strange postcards being sent to residents of upscale Pepys Road, London: WE WANT WHAT YOU HAVE. Well, who wouldn't? It's mostly mansions full of rich people in the runup to the financial crisis. But there's also a Pakistani family-owned corner shop, a Polish contractor, a Hungarian nanny, a traffic warden, and an elderly lady dying of cancer, with a secret in the attic. The rich family, especially the horribly spoiled Real Housewife of London, provides great contrast to the other neighbors who are just trying to get by. Multi PoVs, humor, and realism make this a perfect read for a few long winter's days. And it's not predictable at all. No stereotypes allowed.
    • 4/5
      We Want What You Have..... the residents of Pepys Road are targeted by a campaign of cards with pictures their front doors on them. Then we get meet the people behind the doors, I won't go into analyzing the characters except to say they all want more than they have. Some with good reason.I enjoy books about London even though I don't live there anymore, and have to say this book spent some time on my Kindle before I started it but its one book that I would read again.
    • 4/5
      The stories of some of the inhabitants of Pepys Road, London, whose houses are worth a lot of money and who start receiving postcards with the message "We Want What You Have" written on them. This campaign becomes more sinister, but, for me at least, the campaign was the most forgettable thing about the novel; indeed I did forget all about it from time to time. The narrative switches between different characters including an ineffectual City banker and his appalling wife, his malicious deputy at work, their Hungarian nanny, and their Polish builder. Then there is Petunia, who is dying of a brain tumour, her daughter, her Banksy-like artist grandson, her grandson's assistant and the assistant's girlfriend. The third main cluster is the Kamal family, who run the corner shop, consisting of three brothers (one with a family) and their nightmare mother from Lahore. I found the other storyline surrounding Freddy the football player fairly interesting, but he never really seemed to belong to Pepys Road and Quentina's story was barely linked to the others' at all. It was also sadder than seemed appropriate for the book as a whole. I found this novel very readable, but I had to take regular breaks because it was unrelentingly depressing and sad. There were tiny occasional flashes of humour, but mainly the story consisted of bad things happening to people. While they sometimes deserved what they got, they were usually passive victims of circumstances and the decisions of others, which was frustrating. I had high hopes for some comedy from the visit of Mrs Kamal, but the story went in another direction.Very British - the entire prologue consists of a discussion of property price fluctuations and I have to admit it drew me in!
    • 5/5
      When the residents of Pepys Road in London begin receiving postcards that say only, "We want what you have" they're either bemused or dismiss the cards as junk mail. Pepys Road is filled with houses initially sold as starter homes for the aspirational white collar workers of a century ago, but London is not what it once was and those houses are now worth millions. From the elderly lady who has lived all her life in number 42 and whose kitchen was last renovated in 1958, to the banking executive and his resentful wife, the denizens of Pepys Road are a diverse lot. But as 2008 grinds on, the economic landscape is changing. John Lanchester has the ability to make each of his characters, from the sympathetic to the venal, compelling. Capital has a large cast of characters, but all of them read as real people, complex and interesting. There's Quentina, an asylum-seeker from Zimbabwe who is illegally working as a traffic warden, determined to keep moving forward even as she longs to be able to return to the country she loves. There's Smitty, a Banksy-style artist who loves his nan, even if he doesn't visit very often, and Petunia, who had a difficult and controlling husband and who had expected to live a more expansive life after his death, but who instead is simply continuing in the same restricted routine she has always kept. And there's Zbigniew, the Polish builder who prides himself on the quality of his work and who dreams of returning to Poland with his savings, to give his father the retirement he deserves. There are so many characters, but Lanchester keeps them all moving forward, making the reader care about all of them. This is a superlatively well-written book. It's a joy to read a substantial novel with both heart and plot.
    • 4/5
      Imagine a Hummingbird Cam, flying around and over an older residential street somewhere in London, buzzing the houses, darting randomly from one to another, swooping in low and hovering for a brief period, then abruptly lifting up and away to another distraction. That’s what reading this book is like.

      This panoramic novel unfolds during 2008 over the beginning of the financial meltdown. It is set on the fictional street of Pepys Rd (Lanchester said he based it on streets in his own residential area of Clapham, London, which has been “bankerised” by the wealthy who commute to the City), in the Capital city of London. The residents include a wealthy trader and his obscenely entitled wife, a Muslim family running the local shop (and given the stereotypes in the book, one fears that the token Muslim family has a strong chance of leading to either terrorism or false accusations of such later in the book), a dying old lady, a Polish tradesman serving up his labour for the wealthy, a couple of recent immigrants from Africa, and several others. They all have different story lines, and the chapters hop around back and forth visiting and revisiting the characters. They are pulled together by the common thread of all receiving mysterious messages in various forms, all saying “We Want What You Have”.

      There are so many characters that they tend to feel either a bit flat and anonymous, or else outlandishy cartoonish, as with the wealthy wife Arabella. Some of them, such as the Zimbabwean refugee traffic warden, who has a degree in political science, are showing the edges of a potentially really interesting story, but there just isnt time for follow through.

      The writing is serviceable but often plodding: “Arabella knew that if she drank any more she would have a hangover and part of the point of being in this luxury spa was to go home looking and feeling fabulous, so she went to her room and read a novel set in Afghanistan until she realised she had fallen asleep twice already, and so she put the book down and turned out the light.” Cliches (“Shit flows downhill”) occasionally intrude, weakening the structure.

      Most of the characters themselves want what someone else has. Some of them think they are in control of their lives, but so many extrinsic forces can distort the course of lives that sometimes free will seems only illusory. Given the time period, we know that the financial crisis, and the flow of financial capital is going to play a significant role in the book. It is also about the social capital too. Slowly we do become at least a bit invested in some of the characters, and this keeps the pages turning.

      This is being widely touted for the Booker longlist, to be announced next week. It will be interesting to see if it makes it.
      3 1/2 stars, generously rounded up.
    • 4/5
      Really got hooked by this. The ostensible plot regarding the mysterious postcards that all the inhabitants of Pepys Rd were receiving was a yawn and in the end the revelation of who was responsible and why was a massive anticlimax, but that didn't matter, because its only purpose was to hook you into the lives of the streets inhabitants and make you care about them. Masterful piece of writing.
    • 4/5
      " Maybe It's Because I'm A Londoner" that I enjoyed this book so much. Even though it is set on that strange land south of the Thames, so much of it rings true to a born and bred Londoner like me.
      From the blurbs about it when published I had expected much more about the banking / financial crisis of 2008, but this was much more a state of the nation (or, rather the nation's capital) novel. Money does play a big part in many of the constituent stories.which make up this mosaic, but it does not have an overwhelming effect.
      I particularly liked the story of the old lady and that of the traffic warden. Imagine, I began to have sympathy for one of the "dark forces!"
      It made me laugh; it made me cry; it made me angry and it made me think. I will look forward eagerly to Lanchester's next book.
    • 5/5
      This book is a funny, warm and incisive dissection of London society at the time of the financial crisis of 2008. It is a loosely interlinked set of stories, and covers a wide range of characters. It is especially strong on the experiences of various have-not immigrants, and the amorality of the richer residents. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      A multi stranded story of the residents of Pepys Rd in SE London. Lanchester does a good job of bringing the strands together & getting under the skin of a number of disparate characters.
    • 2/5
      Novels should complicate our sometimes-simplistic understanding of people and situations, not pander to them. There are a lot of stereotypes in this book, but few actual people. The plot is banal, offering little in the way of insight or depth, and the writing reads at times like an A Level creative writing essay. Tired cliches drift in and out: an investment banker with a money-obsessed wife, a hard-working polish builder who wants a girlfriend, a middle-eastern shop owner arrested for terrorism, an anonymous graffiti artist who sells his work for millions: all lazy reflections of a city and time that John Lanchester has failed to actually grapple with. The only chapter worth reading is the prologue. You'll learn more about London and late-capitalism from reading a copy of Metro.
    • 3/5
      I was slightly disappointed in this book. It tells the story of various disparate characters, all of whom live, or are connected in some way with, Pepys Road, an affluent London Street. There is a couple with two young children, living well beyond their means: an old lady who has lived most of her life there and is now dying: an Asian family running a small shop, and a young gifted African footballer who has come to London to make his fortune in football, together with peripheral characters all connected with Pepys Road in some wayThey each have their own story and I found the book somewhat 'bitty' as it alternated between them. I was far more interested in some characters than others, so there were parts I really enjoyed and others I found boring, so it wasn't a completely satisfactory read, but an OK book.
    • 3/5
      Enjoyed it, but felt it 'sagged' a bit in the middle, could have been a bit shorter and covered same ground
    • 3/5
      Ended up being a bit disappointed. A good start but everything then fizzled out. There are some amusing passages, particularly about the financial services industry (in which I work). As a state of the nation novel, I thought it a little bleak but also a bit ambiguous.
    • 4/5
      Summer was around the corner! Not real summer of course, but its British imitation. Then the sun would go in, the wind would rise, and all would be dark and grim, wintry, another British imitation, not snow and ice and wolves and drama but just dark grey cold. The story follows the lives of a group of people linked to a residential street in London called Pepys Road, and takes place over the course of nearly a year, starting a few days before Christmas with city trader Roger's anticipation of his annual bonus and ending as he says goodbye to the street the following November, after selling his family's house. Apart from Roger and his wife, the point of view characters include their Hungarian nanny, a Polish builder who is often employed by the residents of Pepys Road, a Zimbabwean traffic warden, an old lady whose grandfather bought a house on Pepys Road off-plan and who has lived on the road all her life, her daughter and artist grandson, the artist's assistant, several members of the family who run the shop at the corner of the road, Roger's second in command at work, a Zimbabwean traffic warden, a football club fixer, a seventeen-year-old footballer newly arrived from Senegal and his father, and the Detective Inspector who is investigating the a hate campaign against the residents of Pepys Road, which begins when they receive postcards featuring pictures of their houses and the possibly sinister message "We Want What You Have". My favourite parts of the story are about Roger and Arabella, Quentina (the traffic warden), Smitty (the artist) and Detective Inspector Mills, but I was less keen on the parts about football. I liked the way it was just a slice of life, and although the mystery of "We Want What You Have" was solved by the end, not all the strands of the story were so neatly resolved, so I felt that the characters' stories would continue past the end of the story, just as they would in real life. I liked this book more than I expected, given that it was one of the reads for for my book club that I had decided I would only read if I could borrow it from the library. I ended up downloading it as an audiobook and found it easy to follow, as the narrator was good at voices and accents and didn't speak too quickly.
    • 5/5
      This is a slice-of-life novel, the slice being cut from Pepys Road in London and the families who live on or are connected with the road. "Having a house in Pepys Road was like being in a casino in which you were guaranteed to be a winner. If you already lived there, you were rich. If you wanted to move there, you had to be rich. It was the first time in history this had ever been true Britain had become a country of winners and losers and all the people in the street, just by living there, had won."This is not entirely true, of course. Petunia, an elderly pensioner who has just been diagnosed with cancer, just scrapes by. She lives in a house purchased by her grandfather at a time when the houses had just been built, and were affordable--they had been built for the laboring class. Petunia is a winner only in that her daughter will inherit her extremely valuable house after Petunia dies. And there is a Pakistani family who live above the shop they own at the end of the road. We also become involved in the lives of a hedge fund trader/banker and his shopaholic wife, dreaming of how many millions of pounds he will be receiving as a bonus, not realizing that the world is on the cusp of the financial crash; a young soccer star from Senegal who despite advances in the millions suffers a career-threatening injury. Others are the graffiti artist grandson of one of the residents, the illegal immigrant working as a meter maid, the Polish carpenter who does many of the ongoing renovations undertaken by the wealthy residents, the nannys for the spoiled children. These are just the main characters--there are many minor characters whose tales are no less interesting--the assistant to the banker who feels that he is 100% responsible for the banker's success, the artist's assistant who also resents the artist's success. While it might be thought that such a myriad of characters and stories would be difficult to keep track of, that is not the case. Lancaster is such a good writer that the characters are all three-dimensional and memorable. I found myself wondering how Lancaster could know so much about such a wide variety of people.The plot, loose as it is, is driven by a series of notes delivered to each resident of Pepys Road. The notes state, "We want what you have." At first the notes are ignored, or passed off as a marketing campaign by an overzealous real estate company. The notes keep coming, however, and the police become involved. This plot is all played out against a backdrop of the financial crisis, the London art world, the treatment of suspected terrorists, professional sports (soccer), illegal immigration--indeed the theme of the global and financial nature of the city itself. I highly recommend this novel.
    • 2/5
      I enjoy titles which have layers of meaning. I enjoy the cleverness and I appreciate the sign-posting they provide so I can make sure that I don't miss a thread woven into the story. As layered titles go, John Lanchester's Capital isn't particularly difficult to penetrate: there is Capital as Money, and there is Capital as London and the fact that, to Lanchester, the first defines the second adds an admirable tidiness to the layers. All in all, it's a good title. The only problem is that it's been given to the wrong book, for Lanchester's novel betrays both readings.

      Capital is an infuriating book, superficial, glib and shallow. It mirrors prevailing opinions and prejudices, but not prevailing spirit. It is filled with stereotypes but few characters and no people. It doesn't even scratch the surface of what makes London the city it is; it records a pulse but no heartbeat.

      The depiction of Finance, from Roger Yount's dashed bonus hopes to the collapse of Pinker Lloyd, is at best simplistic, at worst childish and unrealistic. The connection back to London is through a single front door - No 51 Pepys Road - behind which lives a family carefully constructed to conform with our most obvious preconceptions.

      Yet, Lanchester's prologue astutely observes that there is a wider connection, a shift in the community's perceptions and values tied to the infectious heart of greed and aspiration. Sadly, the Prologue remains the best part of the book.

      The microcosm device - a single street in London, Pepys Road - falls far short of its intent. Lanchester attempts to overcome the weaknesses of such an unrepresentative device by including a selection of peripheral characters who have a recurring relationship with the street: the builder, the traffic warden, the nanny and an assortment of relatives. But the links are too tenuous, too fragile. Often the link is made simply through an event rather than through the complex social connections that knit a city together. We are given the strands of wool but never the pattern.

      The drama of community lies not in its connections, but in its dependencies and the conflict between what is valued and what is believed to be valuable.

      It would take far more time than I wish to spend to write in detail of all the things that frustrated and irritated me about this book: from the weak plot resolution; its disjointed, episodic structure that reads like a series of newspaper observations; the deliberate pandering to topical public opinion in place of deeper analysis; the technical flaws and the improbable and implausible plot developments.

      Capital is a book that touches on many issues but fails to go to the added trouble of exploring any of them. It doesn't do London justice nor does it do justice to the profound impact that the banshees of Finance and Fear have had on us all.
    • 4/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed this proper novel - at first - and I thought - at first - that many of my fellow reviewers here were being a little churlish.But there is a sense that it adds up to less than the some of its parts. In a large cast, some characters are more engaging than others (inevitably, I suppose, but must it really be inevitable?), and I did have to fight quite hard to stop myself skipping over the chapters concerning my least favourites.I kept waiting to find out how things would go as and when the various lives began to intertwine ... but apart from a couple of near misses, they remained isolated from each other, even as they inhabited houses on the same street. Realistic in this at least.The 'mystery' was feeble and inconsequential, as, in fact, to a greater or lesser extent, were the stories of all the inhabitants of Pepys Road.
    • 3/5
      London in 2008: a city of conspicuous consumption and financial whizz-kids with million pound bonuses in their sights. A city with an underbelly of political refugees and embryonic terrorists. A city that relies on a stream of incomers from Eastern Europe to satisfy its needs for nannies, plumbers and builders.John Lanchester's Capital is a state of the nation novel in which the lives of a group of disparate individuals intersect through their association with one fictitious street in a highly desirable part of the cityPepys Road has undergone a transformation since the late 19th century when the houses were built for lower middle class families; respectable, aspirational people who worked as clerks for solicitors and bankers. Now they're occupied by people like Roger Young, an investment banker, and his self-centered shopaholic wife for whom ".... Having a house in Pepys Road was like being in a casino in which you were guaranteed to be a winner. If you already lived there, you were rich. If you wanted to move there, you had to be rich."From the beginning of the novel it's clear that TROUBLE lurks in this residential Eden. A mysterious hooded figure is seen surreptitiously filming the houses. Soon the inhabitants each receive an anonymous postcard bearing the simple message: “We Want What You Have”. More postcards follow, then videos begin dropping through the letterbox. All bear the same mysterious message.Who is behind the campaign? Lanchester provides a host of candidates from Pakistani newsagents and Polish builders to au pairs from Eastern Europe and a political refugee from Zimbabwe who tramps the neighbourhood issuing parking tickets using a forged work permit. They're all outsiders who are trying to establish a foothold for themselves and make a new life in England.If they're not having an easy time of it neither are the insiders. Roger's hopes of bagging a million-pound bonus enabling him to sustain two homes, expensive cars and endless home improvements look increasingly precarious. Olive, an octogenerian who's lived in the street all her live, discovers she has an inoperable brain tumour. And the Kamal family who run the newsagents on the corner have to contend with two unwelcome visitors. The friend from the past who flirts with Islamic fundamentalism is bad enough. But far worse is the annual visit by 'Mother' for whom nothing her sons and daughter-in-law can do, can ever be good enough.We get to know them through more than 100 short chapters each of which takes us into the mind of a different character and shows us a different side of the city. It's a narrative style that pushes the concept of the omniscient narrator to its extremes.One moment we're walking the streets with Quentina the traffic warden, contending with irate householders who can't understand why, having paid a multi million pound price tag to buy the house, they have to pay even more for the right to park outside at any time they choose. The next we're exploring the neighbourhood with the father of a young footballing whizz kid from Senegal and experiencing his bafflement at seeing a city filled with people in constant motion. "Even when they weren't doing anything they were walking dogs, or going to betting shops, or reading newspapers at bus stops or listening to music through headphones or skateboarding along the pavement or eating fast food...." And then suddenly the focus changes to the perspective of a young religious zealot surrounded by "...women whose breasts were almost fully visible under , over, or through their thin summer clothes. Alcohol everywhere."As a commentary on the turbulent nature of London on the eve of the financial crisis, it works far more effectively than Sebastian Faulks' A Week in December which tried to cover much of the same ground but ran out of steam long before the final pages. An enjoyable read in many respects with some well drawn characters ( my favourites were Quentina the traffic warden and Roger the investment banker) but I'm not exactly sure what point Lanchester is trying to make.In the prologue, the narrator reflects that "Britain had become a country of winners and losers." It's easy to see who the losers are in the novel; there is more than one character whose status and wealth have diminished by the end of the novel, or whose dreams have collapsed. The winners are less clear to see - one of the characters finds love by showing that he's an honest man and another resolves to seize the chance given to him to change his life for the better. As for the others, without giving away secrets, all I can say is that one of them faces jail and another deportation.If Lanchester's mission is to merely to observe and convey a microcosm of life in one small corner of London, then he succeeded. But I wish he'd gone further and given some indication of what he saw as some of the underlying forces at work in this society and whether the factors that influence his characters's behaviours are ones that present increasing concern. In short, I wish he'd come down from his perch on the fence. His book would have been all the stronger.
    • 4/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed this book and all the characters!
    • 3/5
      A sturdily constructed tale of a random group of Londoners about to experience the great financial crash. United only by the fact they all live on the same street. A banker, a footballer, a Polish builder, an Asian shop keeper, a pensioner. United in geography and environment but a group of individuals. The construct allows the author to show how the political and economic events of the time work their way down to the lives of people on the street.Well told, a page turner if a few too many pages if truth be told. But in the end it's a shrug of the shoulders and a so-what? We don't have any particular feelings about any of the peole we've met. Too little characterisation and too overt a structure. Too many words and too little to say.
    • 4/5
      Very readable, and very current for us Londoners, the range of characters and plots reflecting the big and hectic Habsburg-style melting pot we live in now. The book’s size and scope and I suppose it's very defined London setting invite comparisons with Dickens; yet the episodic style - little snippets of this and that - sometimes leave one adrift, unsure what the connection or flow is. But it’s all interesting enough, sustained by the suspense of each short vignette chapter halting at its own less or more dramatic cadence, by one mysterious thread binding the different stories together, and by the good realistic London light speech , and interior monologue that Lanchester uses. The style and level of insight can be a bit shallow at times – as in ready-rolled phrases like 'her face lit up like someone acting out the phrase 'her face lit up'. But the sum of the parts is substantial, and I happily recommend the book.