Sinclair, known quantity. Past work. Non-fiction, stories of the city. Mundane mysticism. Magic of the wasteground. Beauty in poverty. Nostalgia for dog turds.
Style? Broken mirror. Reflections, ugly or beautiful depending on angle. Interesting patterns.

Start small. Minor inconveniences. Sexism, racism, homophobia. Casual or intended? Who knows.
Single work or multiple source? Behind dresser, under sofa, recovered fragments repackaged as new? Who cares.
Fraud? hipster bait, tilted urinal, paint spackle as magic eye picture? Maybe not.
Private function, members only, password please, no Homers? Maybe so.
Whats the story, morning glory? Story is the story, narrative as narrative.
If Narrative = Narrative, then Narrative = Anything.
Anything >= Bollocks then Narrative = Bollocks.
Selling point?. Make something up. 'Norton... Trapped in space - within the city limits of London - but not in time'. Sounds like a blurb. True? no, fiction. False? no, fiction. Its all fiction, why not the blurb too.

The above review is written in lingua-bollocks. If you speak lingua-bollocks then you might well enjoy this book :) . ( )

I picked this up for the Dave McKean illustrations - I'd never heard of the author.
Well, I read through page 50 (the first three stories), and looked at all the illustrations.
This just isn't my kind of thing. I guess I'd call it 'British Weird' or something of the sort. The writing seems deliberately unanchored and incoherent, with themes of seedy underworlds and violence running through it. The stories are linked by having a character named 'Norton,' but that seems like a post-hoc device to tie them together.

Maybe it just isn't suiting my mood at the moment, but what I read didn't catch my attention, and from flipping ahead, the rest looks like more of the same. I don't feel like slogging through the remaining 140 pages... ( )

This collection of stories doesn't make much sense. And what makes sense is quite boring.

I bought the book because 3 of the stories are illustrated by Dave McKean but even his art is not that great here. ( )