Rumours of a Hurricane - Softcover

Lott, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014028446X ISBN 13: 9780140284461

Publisher: Penguin, 2003

Synopsis

Tragic and hilarious in equal measure, Tim Lott’s story of Charlie and Maureen Buck’s ailing marriage and their climb up (and down) the social ladder during the 1980s is a wonderfully honest portrait of ordinary people living through an extraordinary time. Steeped in the decade’s cataclysmic events, packed with the crimes and misdemeanours we visit on each another, ‘Rumours of a Hurricane’ is a powerful tale of change, how we face it – and how we don’t.

‘An outstanding comic novel. Places the 1980s under sceptical and merciless scrutiny’ Literary Review.

About this title

Review:

The death of homeless man Charlie Buck is unremarkable to everyone except the few passers-by who witness his drunken--and apparently voluntary--fall beneath a speeding lorry. No loved ones or friends attend his last breaths in hospital--his possessions amount to a National Insurance card, a digital watch and a newspaper obituary for a dead composer. But Charlie was a person. He had a wife and a son, his own set of dreams and personal demons, a biography no more and no less studded with dramas, defeats and victories than anyone else’s.

This is the mission of Rumours of a Hurricane, Tim Lott’s second novel: to chart the life of a single man, revealing it to be remarkable in its ordinariness and epic within its narrow confines. The backdrop to Charlie’s tragic saga is the relentlessly changing Britain of the 1980s, a nation twisted by greed and discontent. History weaves gracefully in and out of the tale, its hero riding high as he buys his own council flat and invests in the stock market; laid low as the great storms and the recession hit his home and his business. But Lott’s grasp of the recent past is by no means his most impressive talent--what dazzles on every page is his powerful grasp of the human soul and his ability to turn harsh truths into some truly fascinating fiction. Like Lott’s first novel White City Blue, this is an uncompromising book, one whose messages we ignore at our peril. --Matthew Baylis

Review:

A landmark novel ... a subtle, vivid and compassionate exploration of the effets of social change on the southern working class ... a mature tragedy (Daily Mail)

The first great British novel of the 21st Century (Tony Parsons)

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 014028446X
• ISBN 13: 9780140284461
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384