Gary Marshall House Of Leaves is one of the strangest books we’ve seen for some time. With multiple narrators, a mass of footnotes and direct transcripts of video tapes, the novel has been described as a "literary Blair Witch Project’ – a description we’d wholeheartedly agree with. The novel is narrated by Johnny Truant, a […]
Half Man Half Biscuit : Trouble Over Bridgewater
Gary Marshall If there was any justice in the world, it would be illegal to own Simply Red albums and Half Man Half Biscuit would be worshipped as gods. Unfortunately, the vagaries of the music business mean that the band who brought us the immortal lyric “God, I could murder a Cadbury’s Flake, but then […]
Illiad – Evil Geniuses In A Nutshell
Gary Marshall Even by the standards of American humour, Evil Geniuses In A Nutshell is unusual; a book of cartoons that should carry a set of minimum system requirements. Where Scott Adams’ Dilbert series concentrates more on universal office themes, with a worrying tendency to fill half of the books with new age self-help nonsense, […]
Naomi Klein : No Logo : Ad Nauseum
Gary Marshall gets angry about advertising with Naomi Klein’s No Logo “If anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself… there’s no fucking joke coming. You are Satan’s spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage, you are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourselves – it’s the only way to save your […]
Tupac Shakur and Death Row Records : Have Gun Will Travel and Rebel For The Hell Of It : Murder Was The Case
Gary Marshall on the history of gangsta rap as documented in Tupac Shakur: Rebel For The Hell Of It and Have Gun Will Travel: The Spectacular Rise and Violent Fall of Death Row Records Under the guidance of its founder Marion “Suge” Knight, Death Row Records became one of the most successful and most talked-about […]
Douglas Coupland – Miss Wyoming
Gary Marshall With the success of Generation X, Douglas Coupland found himself in the role of spokesman for a disaffected generation, documenting the ennui of twentysomethings in a world where even the most radical youth movements are quickly co-opted and commercialised by the mainstream. Microserfs followed soon afterwards, a soap opera covering the tangled relationships […]
Crowded House : Afterglow
Gary Marshall In a decade where most music was aimed at eight-year-olds, Crowded House were a band out of time. The unassuming Antipodeans had no image to speak of, no manifesto or world domination plan. Instead, they created album after album of resolutely adult songs. Few bands cite them as an influence, yet you’ll find […]
Metallica : S&M
Gary Marshall Rock and classical music make uneasy bedfellows. Whether it’s heavy metal bands performing with ‘real’ musicians, orchestras tackling the hits of the day or rubbish Britpop bands trying to be taken seriously, the results are usually uninspiring. While S&M avoids most of the common traps, it’s still a flawed effort. S&M teams the […]
Mark Taplin: Open Lands: Travels Through Russia’s Once Forbidden Places
Gary Marshall During the Cold War huge areas of Russia were strictly off-limits to foreign visitors and, in classic tit-for-tat style, Russian visitors were allowed entry to the USA provided their travels didn’t take them anywhere there were roads, people or small animals. In 1992 both superpowers signed the “Open Lands” agreement (from which Mark […]
Ed Jones: This Is Pop
Gary Marshall It wasn’t a rock gig, it was an event. Journalists from all the major music papers were there, and even the local newspaper had marked the event with a special supplement. Celebrities air-kissed backstage, and the band took the stage in front of thousands of people. For Wigan musician Ed Jones, the gig […]
The Onion: Our Dumb Century: Max Cannon: Red Meat
Gary Marshall damages his health laughing at The Onion’s Our Dumb Century and Max Cannon’s Red Meat According to popular belief, the phrase “American humour” belongs in the same oxymoronic category as “military intelligence” and “virtually spotless”. We British take great delight in reminding Americans that they have no sense of irony – not because […]
Peter Körte, Georg Seesslen: Joel And Ethan Coen
Gary Marshall The Coen brothers are responsible for some of the most impressive feats of cinematic lunacy in recent years, from the slapstick of Raising Arizona to the pastiche of The Hudsucker Proxy, and this book is the first attempt at highbrow analysis of their films to date. Although the profusion of photographs and widely-spaced […]
Magnus Mills: All Quiet On The Orient Express
Gary Marshall Magnus Mills’ first novel, The Restraint Of Beasts, uncovered the sinister underbelly of rural England, as a team of feckless fencers found themselves drawn into a Kafkaesque nightmare. In All Quiet On The Orient Express, Mills tells the tale of an innocent holidaymaker who, erm, finds himself drawn into a Kafkaesque nightmare that […]
Paul Gootenberg: Cocaine: Global Histories
Gary Marshall The story of cocaine is a depressingly familiar one. Like many of the drugs now banned, it was originally hailed as a groundbreaking new chemical and was manufactured entirely legally throughout the world. People claimed it could treat all kinds of illnesses, presumably because the patients were too whacked off their gourds to […]
Iain Banks: The Business
Gary Marshall Noam Chomsky was right, and Bill Hicks was a visionary. While we’re all distracted by politics, the world is actually being controlled by an unelected and unaccountable organisation with the power to make or break entire nations. The premise of Iain Banks’ latest novel will delight conspiracy theorists everywhere. Kate Telman is a […]
Supergrass : Supergrass
Gary Marshall I never liked Supergrass. “Alright” was cheerful to the point of inanity, and the band always seemed to have more facial hair than actual talent. Now, though, I want to join their fan club, follow the band around the world and tattoo the band name on my buttocks. Supergrass is a masterpiece – […]
Feeder : Yesterday Went Too Soon
Gary Marshall We like Feeder round these parts. Their single Suffocate is seldom off the SPIKE stereo, and we were pleasantly surprised to see the band supporting REM on their recent tour. The band’s recent string of singles has been spectacular, too, throwing a range of different influences into the mix and giving them all […]
John Diamond: C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too
Gary Marshall As far as John Diamond was concerned, cancer happens to other people. A columnist who is paid handsomely for spouting off each week about whatever is on his mind, he undergoes tests for the lump in his neck and, rather than panicking, sees it as a potentially interesting anecdote. “I imagined myself in […]
Ethan Coen: Gates Of Eden
Gary Marshall Ethan Coen is one half of the deranged Coen Brothers, responsible for heights of cinematic lunacy including Saddam Hussein in a Busby Berkeley musical, attacks by squeaky-voiced German nihilists and Steve Buscemi in a wood-chipper. If you sat stony-faced through any of the Coen Brothers’ films (Fargo, Blood Simple, The Big Lebowski, The […]
Andrew O’Hagan: Our Fathers
Gary Marshall For anybody who read his first book, The Missing, it’s no surprise that Andrew O’Hagan has written a novel. While his debut book was non-fiction, its vivid evocation of O’Hagan’s childhood in Ayrshire and Glasgow and his poignant tales of the parents of missing children felt like a gripping thriller instead of limp […]
Bruce Robinson: The Peculiar Memoirs Of Thomas Penman
Gary Marshall In one of his routines, Eddie Izzard explains why supermarkets don’t have toilet rolls on display near the entrance in case you think “this is a poo shop! Everything in here is poo!”. Your first impression of The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman may well be similar, as the first chapter revels in […]
Steven Kelly: The War Artist
Gary Marshall Steven Kelly is the editor of online UK literary magazine The Richmond Review and, being mature professionals, we were looking forward to sticking the knife into this, his fourth novel. All in the name of highbrow literary criticism, of course. Unfortunately for us, The War Artist is great. Although the plot initially seems […]
Peter Guralnick: Careless Love: The Unmaking Of Elvis Presley
Gary Marshall I was five years old when Elvis died and, like most of my generation, my knowledge of Elvis is derived largely from muck-raking biographies, shockingly bad films, sightings documented in supermarket tabloids and documentaries about brain-damaged Elvis impersonators. With the exception of U2’s embarrassing fandom no modern bands list Elvis as an influence […]
Victor Olliver: Farce Hole
Gary Marshall Citron Press has, perhaps unfairly, been derided as a vanity publisher. Billing itself as a writers’ collective and endorsed by none other than Martin Amis, the company certainly charge prospective authors considerably less than the average vanity company and do seem to make an effort to market their books. It’s difficult to be […]
Richard Dawkins: Climbing Mount Improbable
Gary Marshall It’s tempting to see Richard Dawkins as the Jeremy Clarkson of Darwinism, chainsmoking Marlboros and cackling as he writes in his diary: “To-do on Monday: wind up Creationists”. Although the image is perhaps a little far-fetched, it’s safe to say that Climbing Mount Improbable is unlikely to top the recommended reading lists of […]
