This Bleeding City - Softcover

Preston, Alex

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571251706 ISBN 13: 9780571251704

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2010

Synopsis

The shattering novel of one man swept away in the turmoil of emotional, financial and moral boom and bust.

Charlie Wales is a young man who wants everything. Fresh from University, he's seduced by the excitement of a new life in London and all that it promises. There's Vero, the beautiful French girl who might finally fall for him. There's the lure of art, but also the promise of fast money in the City. And his friends, who are spiralling into a world of non-stop parties and unchecked greed. But as the choices begin to tear him apart, there's also the danger that all the things he desires are on the brink of crashing around him ...

This debut novel, written by a 30-year-old trader, does not merely pick over the carcass of the financial markets in the wake of the recent crash. It is also a heartbreaking love story, a withering study of the years of excess, and a timely reminder of how good people end up doing terrible things.

About this title

Review:

'Alex Preston ... is to be commended for offering us 'This Bleeding City', a novel that tells us a few warm emotional truths behind a cold news story, the human tale of how it can all go wrong ... the angry rants to be found in recent works that deal with the financial crisis (such as the scattergun vitriol of Ben Elton's 'Meltdown' and the better-calibrated, angry-outsider narrative of Sebastian Faulks' 'A Week in December') don't tell the human story anywhere near as well as Preston does ... [his] take is more nuanced ... enjoyable and worth reading for the narrative drive. Preston's style is both spare and rich, brutal and deft. He conjures exquisitely desolated cityscapes ... may he continue to shine a light on the giant, scary engine that is modern capitalism.' --Financial Times

'Preston ... has pulled off something undeniably magnetic with his first novel ... [he] is a gifted writer, with a talent for dragging the eye along the page through sharply realized images and a terse intensity of emotion ... intensely gripping - even upsetting - from the first, and if you still have the stomach for a tale about the despair that materialism can bring, then you will lap this novel up.' --City AM

'Preston's debut novel could inaugurate a whole genre dedicated to fiscal calamity ... it is a tribute to Preston that he manages to pull off the considerable feat of arousing sympathy for Charlie ... [his] style often impresses. Striking metaphors and acute observations are strewn through his pages ... this is a novel of admirable ambition.' --Independent

From the Publisher:

Winner of the Spear's First Book Award and the Edinburgh Festival Reader's Choice Award.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0571251706
• ISBN 13: 9780571251704
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352