Awards

• Winner of Green Carnation Prize 2010
• Winner of Green Carnation Prize 2010.

Overview

Full Product Details

9780553820096

Table of Contents

Reviews

One of the funniest books I've read in a long time. In fact, these pages are packed with so many good lines, even the footnotes are a joy to read. ...Witty and wise, moving but never mawkish, this is the kind of memoir that puts most others to shame * TIME OUT * Entrancing, funny, deeply moving and wonderfully written. Please read it -- ELIZABETH BUCHAN Funny and charming...here a voracious young reader makes his great mental escape from the suburban Stalag of south London via the literature that, once he masters its craft, will lead him back to recreate this lovingly detailed past -- Boyd Tonkin * INDEPENDENT 'Books of the Year' * Beautiful, magical and moving * DAILY MAIL * Absolutely charming...beautifully written, with a sort of English Thunderbolt Kid (Bill Bryson) feel. Highly recommended -- Sarah Broadhurst * BOOKSELLER *

One of the funniest books I've read in a long time. In fact, these pages are packed with so many good lines, even the footnotes are a joy to read. ...Witty and wise, moving but never mawkish, this is the kind of memoir that puts most others to shame TIME OUT Entrancing, funny, deeply moving and wonderfully written. Please read it -- Elizabeth Buchan Funny and charming...here a voracious young reader makes his great mental escape from the suburban Stalag of south London via the literature that, once he masters its craft, will lead him back to recreate this lovingly detailed past -- Boyd Tonkin INDEPENDENT 'Books of the Year' Beautiful, magical and moving DAILY MAIL Absolutely charming...beautifully written, with a sort of English Thunderbolt Kid (Bill Bryson) feel. Highly recommended -- Sarah Broadhurst BOOKSELLER

One of the funniest books I've read in a long time. In fact, these pages are packed with so many good lines, even the footnotes are a joy to read. ...Witty and wise, moving but never mawkish, this is the kind of memoir that puts most others to shame TIME OUT Entrancing, funny, deeply moving and wonderfully written. Please read it -- ELIZABETH BUCHAN Funny and charming...here a voracious young reader makes his great mental escape from the suburban Stalag of south London via the literature that, once he masters its craft, will lead him back to recreate this lovingly detailed past -- Boyd Tonkin INDEPENDENT 'Books of the Year' Beautiful, magical and moving DAILY MAIL Absolutely charming...beautifully written, with a sort of English Thunderbolt Kid (Bill Bryson) feel. Highly recommended -- Sarah Broadhurst BOOKSELLER

The book is fabulous, and I hope it sells forever. Entrancing, funny, deeply moving and wonderfully written. Please read it Upbeat and forgiving...Fowler's South London childhood was deeply weird...but the tone is sunny, and anyone who remembers Mivvis, jamboree bags, streets with no cars, Sid James and vast old Odeons will love this Sixties retro-fest. INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY Paper-dry wit and natural charm...brutally funny. LONDON LITE A wonderfully vigorous read, confident in its total recall and acute in its deft definitions of characters. Delightfully written, this funny and engrossing memoir is a wonderful evocation of a Fifties and Sixties childhood CHOICE 'Book of the Month' Paper-dry wit, natural charm, brutally funny anecdotes - Fowler's likeable memoir unearths the trail that led the schoolboy to become a writer LONDON EVENING STANDARD Beautiful, magical and moving DAILY MAIL Humorously recounted, Fowler's passion for reading is framed by an affectionate description of his London childhood, adding colour to a memoir packed with anecdotes FINANCIAL TIMES His book is an almost Morrissey-like lament, with a similar plangent drollery, for a sixties childhood spent in a backwater of Greenwich. Fowler has both a taste and a flair for the lurid. His mother is lovingly evoked in this memoir. The book has a well-rounded narrative arc, incidentally, and the father is redeemed by some closing revelations. Here are the roots of an author who would become romantically committed to the most romantic forms of storytelling. I wonder whether the computer-driven generation will find the same solace and the kind of energy that drives Fowler NEW STATESMAN Written truthfully and bringing towards its conclusion a moving reconciliation. It also contains one of the best encapsulations of what it is to be a writer THE SCOTSMAN If you were born in the suburbs in 1953, this book has your name on it. Actually, it has Christopher Fowler's, but this memoir is exactly right for anyone who wished they had been born in a less embarrassing time, place and family. Even in the direst of family discords, the laughter lurked INDEPENDENT I loved Paperboy. It took me back to Vesta Chow Mein and the dire warnings that reading would 'hurt my eyes'. The fifties and sixties are represented as a golden age in which to grow up. Christopher Fowler reminds us they were not that great!

Author Information

Christopher Fowler was the multiple award-winning author of almost fifty novels and short story collections, including the celebrated Bryant & May mysteries. His other novels include Roofworld, Spanky, The Sand Men and Hot Water. He has also written two acclaimed memoirs, Paperboy (winner of the Green Carnation Prize) and Film Freak, plus The Book of Forgotten Authors and Peculiar London, Bryant and May's singular and eccentric guide to the city. In 2015 Chris won the CWA's coveted 'Dagger in the Library' for his body of work. He lived in London and Barcelona. Diagnosed with cancer just as the UK went into lockdown in 2020, Chris died on 2nd March 2023.

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