Penguin Classics
Photos | 08/03/2006 at 12:38:28
This is the pattern on my ancient copy of Byron's collected works. I love these old Penguin cover designs. They're like granny wallpaper but even better.
Interview with author Joseph Connolly - 04/08/05.
Words | 08/03/2006 at 12:38:19
In Joseph Connolly's latest novel, 'Love Is Strange', we meet the protagonist Clifford Coyle as he hovers between life and death. Lying in a hospital bed, Clifford tries to work out what has happened to him, taking us back in the process to his apparently ordinary childhood in 1950s London.
Clifford's mother is the centre of his universe. The archetypal 1950s housewife, Gillian is stifled by the monotony of her life and her rigid, unforgiving husband, Arthur. Clifford's elder sister Annette, struggling to cope with a strict convent school and the onset of adolescence, is silent and resentful at home, while Arthur is so out of step with the rest of the family that they actively look forward to his secretive 'out' evenings.
The novel is told in what Connolly describes as the 'breathless babble' of Clifford's childish stream-of-consciousness, interwoven with first person narratives from the other family members, yet Connolly has succeeded in making even the chilly Arthur seem attractive.
'People who have read it have found him immensely sympathetic and touching,' he says. 'He did do bad things, but he wasn't necessarily a bad person. Beryl Bainbridge was terribly taken with him. Which maybe says quite a lot about Beryl!'
Connolly's previous novels are preoccupied with the flaws and infidelities of the middle classes but 'Love Is Strange' cranks up the depravity tenfold. Arthur's furtive 'out' evenings soon bring shame upon the family. That is really where the story begins.
Connolly explains that the book is 'about the seeds of corruption and how they can flower when no one is aware they've even been planted. I wanted to show that in this very ordinary semi-detached suburban house with this terribly ordinary nuclear family, extraordinary things can happen.'
And 'ordinary' is certainly the word for the dowdy '50s world that he's lovingly recreated -from the smell of the beeswax and paraffin to the feel of the linoleum and the crackle of the wireless.
'I think with people of about 50 the book will have a huge resonance. One remembered things like the smell of tea cards, because it was the highlight of the week getting one. Life was very small and humble in those days.'
The arrival of the television in the Coyle household coincides with Arthur's downfall and, in its own way, is just as earth-shattering.
'Suddenly, other worlds were opened up', Connolly remembers. 'On television, to hear two people talking in a funny accent, maybe a northern accent or Cockney accent that you'd never heard before, or to see two people kiss - well, you'd never seen or heard this in your life. It was amazing.'
Along with introducing viewers to unfamiliar people and situations, television brought with it something a little more insidious.
'That was the other thing about TV- the adverts. Suddenly you wanted something that the day before you didn't even know existed! This was very corrupting and it continues to be so.'
However, it isn't just 'Hancock's Half Hour' or adverts for Bird's Eye peas that transform the Coyles' lives. Arthur's disgrace spells financial ruin for the family: Clifford is dumped in the local comprehensive, while Annette is expelled from school and sent to a religious borstal in the wilds of Ireland.
Annette experiences shocking and savage physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her carers - a band of sadistic, whip-cracking nuns. There are, Connolly admits, echoes here of the stories that have emerged about the Christian Brothers' schools in Ireland in the last decade or so.
'For a long time in the Catholic faith there was no such thing as a corrupt priest or nun. And now everyone thinks they're all bent and evil. But in those days, they had an almost godlike presence. And, yes, I wanted to show how filthy all that is.'
Church, family, school, even beloved Auntie Beeb - it seems that no institution is sacred in Connolly's eyes. He attended a Catholic school himself, but insists that he has no particular axe to grind.
'I did, however, want to make it quite clear that the people who wrap themselves up in this horrible muslin of so-called purity are warped. Totally warped.'
But possibly not quite as warped as Annette, who, when let loose on swinging'60s London, has grand plans for herself and Clifford. At the end of the book, as Connolly observes, 'one is agog at the scale of the crime.'
<b>Appeared in Time Out August 17 - 24 2005</b>
The Russian Futurists - Let's Get Ready To Crumble. Upper Class.
Words | 08/03/2006 at 12:38:09
Matthew Adam Hart has been trading under his Russian Futurists moniker since 2001, emerging with debut The Method of Modern Love and developing his R n Bedroom sound into 2003s masterful Lets Get Ready to Crumble. Harts latest work takes the same ingredients woozy, lovelorn vocals, the silliest, poppiest synth flourishes and crunk Casio beats and turns everything up to eleven. Our Thickness is immense, from the stomping opener Paul Simon to the AM-anthem 2 Dots On A Map that closes the album out. Its bedroom pop at its sweetest and most accomplished - Hart drops hook after hook like so many sweetie wrappers, his Wilson-esque melodies tripping effortlessly one after the other. Its all perfectly poised too, the saccharine hooks offset by the beautifully phrased, melancholic lyrics. Our Thickness is proof that, occasionally, less really isnt more.
<b>Appeared in Plan B Magazine June - July 2005</b>
The Postman's Park
Photos | 08/03/2006 at 12:38:01
I went to the Postman's Park yesterday afternoon and spent ages pouring over the plaques at the far end of the yard. Postman's Park is tucked behind St Paul's Cathedral and is made up of several old churchyards and graveyards with St Botolph's nestled in one corner. Some kindly Victorian gentleman decided it would be the perfect place to dedicate a memorial to brave, ordinary Britons who died in heroic acts. There are in all about 3 decades worth of brave acts set out in the stiffest, most sincere and almost comic language, describing in detail how such and such a person died of gas poisoning, drowning, scalding, being set on fire while rescuing such and such from a hideous demise. This one is probably my favourite.
The Thermals - Barden's Boudoir. 20/04/05.
Words | 08/03/2006 at 12:37:48
This review should have been all about The Thermals. How awesome they were. How they whipped through their set like The Ramones, only stopping for drummer Jordan Hudson to count off the lead into the next song. How, despite the terrible sound, their songs new and old explode and fizz like the rock candy crystals that were banned at my school. Except its not. Its all about the two mean old dudes down at the front. Lets call them Horace and Jasper. Horace and Jasper are almost the only thing I can recall about this show. The way they threw themselves around, stomping all over the little indie girls at the front. The way they tossed beer all over my friend and I (twice). The way one of them Jasper, I think tried to punch out the dude standing next to me for asking them, politely, to calm down. They hijacked the show, intimidated everyone and none of us felt like we could do anything to stop them. It would almost be heartbreaking if it wasnt for the friendships forged in the crowd, unified against our common enemy or the gleeful delight found in scooping the plastic pint glasses off the filthy floor and bouncing them off their baldy heads. It would almost be heartbreaking if it wasnt for the fact that I tripped up the stairs and onto Stoke Newington Road with a broad smile on my face.
<b>Appeared in Plan B Magazine June - July 2005</b>