"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
The antihero of Human Punk is Joe Martin: poor white trash from the council estates of Slough. In the novel's first third, set at the "arse-end of the 70s", Joe is a teenage no-hoper into cheap booze and cheaper girls. He's also into the new punk music that has finally percolated down to the Middlesex hinterlands.
King captures Joe's humble yet never-to-be-forgotten adolescent excitements--"the tingle of the cider" and the "smell of Bev's perfume banging into me"--with such empathy and verve that, in its praise, you can't help sensing the autobiographer at work rather than the novelist.
Unfortunately, the following sections of the novel aren't as telling. First it flashes forward to the late 1980s, when Joe is a backpacker returning to Blighty, as the prodigal son, on the Trans-Siberian railway; then it moves on to glitzy New Labour London of the millennium, where Joe is a moneymaking DJ. Throughout it all Joe broods on a childhood incident when a friend was nearly drowned, and the solving of this "puzzle"--his pal's fate--is what provides the book with its denouement. However, these later sections fail to grip the reader as it is difficult to afford the older, harder Joe the same sympathy one gave his youthful incarnation, and without such identification the whole book lacks psychological Semtex.
Fans of King's bleak, staccato, first-person narratives will not be disappointed by his now familiar but explosive insights into the male psyche.--Sean Thomas
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
FREE
Within United Kingdom
Book Description Paperback / softback. Condition: New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. Seller Inventory # B9781629631158
Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9781629631158
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 6666-TRD-9781629631158
Book Description PAP. Condition: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000. Seller Inventory # EB-9781629631158
Book Description PAP. Condition: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000. Seller Inventory # EB-9781629631158
Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # a0241d42a162cbf674e2de2bcbbe707f
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 352 pages. 7.90x5.60x1.00 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __1629631159
Book Description Condition: New. 2015. Paperback. New. Seller Inventory # P008993