Calabash - Softcover

Fowler, Christopher

3.81

107 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0751530409 ISBN 13: 9780751530407

Publisher: Sphere, 2000

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Kay Goodwin is a 16-year-old boy with a smart mouth and too much imagination. Marooned in the rundown seaside resort of Cole Bay, his life is a horrible comedy of errors that has trapped him in the country's most dismal place at the worst possible time - the early '70s. He dreams of escaping the crumbling pier and the grumbling pensioners, of finding a place where he is appreciated, but it's the one thing he can't do. Until he discovers a faraway land with characters who are impossibly exotic, but strangely familiar. In the kingdom of Calabash he can have everything he's ever wanted from life. There's only one small problem. Calabash doesn't actually exist.

In an England that's still hungover from the 60s, everyone in Cole Bay expects him to conform, but Kay is prepared to risk everything to find out what makes him different, what his life really holds, and what will happen if he believes in the impossible...

Christopher Fowler's warm-hearted new novel takes place at the most painful point of growing up, where dreams are broken but where everyone gets one last chance to be free.

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Review:

Anyone who served their adolescence in the awful Seventies can't help but wince in recognition of Fowler's sharp and witty portrayal of the era, while Cole Bay itself is so depressingly familiar you feel you could be looking at your old holiday snaps. (THE TIMES)

From the Author:

A journalist spends a nerve-wracking weekend in the company of Nazis. A tropical holiday takes an alarming turn thanks to a troupe of monkeys. A waitress challenges a sinister customer in a night restaurant. A career girl finds out what’s above the glass ceiling. A tailor plots to escape his execution, London is overrun with rats, killers fall in love, revenge backfires on the unfaithful. As life, love, trust and betrayal entwine together in the new century, housewives, students and executives all find themselves in situations that become increasingly disturbing...This is my ninth collection of demonized urban stories, designed to fill your waking dreams with dark fears and even darker laughter. Of the 17 new stories here, you’ll find five outright happy endings, seven dark conclusions and a number of split outcomes. To me, that seems an even-handed reflection of what life deals out. Included are 'Cairo 6.1', my hundredth published story, and the Bram Stoker Award-nominated ‘The Green Man’.

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