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Fragmented
Synopsis
This is a unified collection of sixty short stories and sketches, charting a personal journey from squatter and hippy in Seventies London to creative and stable middle age as husband, father, teacher and writer. The book is a response to history, recording social change, often by seizing moments in the flux of city life. The stories are self contained fragments though often linked in place and character, and - I hope - parts of a whole, fragments which assemble a narrative of the city and the individual.
The range is topographically and socially diverse: many sketches are set in Hackney, where I live; several are about squatting in Hornsey Rise - at one time the largest squat in Europe; there is a personal (and unique) report of Ronan Bennett's trial at the Old Bailey on a charge of conspiracy to cause explosions, at which I was a witness, having seen his arrest; an anecdote about telling a lie to Alan Ross, editor of the London Magazine . The book is about characters, buildings, places, down-and-outs, outsiders, drugs, race and crime, and explores deeper themes of childhood, family and other relationships, writing, political idealism, fear of oblivion, a sense of the past. The tone is variously reflective, nostalgic, critical, humorous and detached.
Many pieces have been published in magazines including Aesthetica, Ambit, Cork Literary Review, Dream Catcher, Frogmore Papers, The London Magazine, the Penniless Press ; a few read in public or performed, and most would be suitable for radio and for newspaper slots.
Approximate length: 43,000 words.
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