I’ve enthused before about the work of Tim Wynne-Jones. This is an early novel of his. His writing was not quite as sharp as it has since become, but this novel still held my attention. In part, it’s because the story (a sort of fusion of Charles Dickens and Raymond Chandler) focuses on my own neigbourhood in Toronto, and concerns the underside of that neighbourhood at the very time when I was myself part of that underside. I recognize and remember almost every physical feature in the book. Some of the places, buildings, and social configurations no longer exist, but reading this novel brought them back to me with the intensity of the smell of piss in a dark city alley.
0 Comments.