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The Bleakest Novel I've Ever Read


DuncanEwart

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I have just finished "Tokyo Year Zero" by David Peace and I am now struggling to think of a bleaker novel I have read. I know from previous threads that David Peace is not to everyone's taste, and I would not recommend this book to anyone who has never read Peace before, but I find him to be an interesting and challenging writer. His Tokyo is a space imbued with an atmosphere of death and decay and disease and populated by defeated and vulnerable citizens, easy prey for criminals and killers. "Tokyo Year Zero" is bleaker than the three Cormac McCarthy novels I've read- "The Road", "Blood Meridian" and "Outer Dark", and they were pretty bleak.    

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20 hours ago, Blackislekillie said:

Occupied City is heavy going. Almost gave up on it.

I liked it. I thought it was more classically Gothic than "Tokyo Year Zero" in the way it told the story from different viewpoints and from different sources and we are never completely sure of what constitutes "the truth".

Edited by DuncanEwart
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  • 2 weeks later...

I haven't read "Clockers" but I have seen the Spike Lee directed film, which I believe is very under-rated. I remember the reviews at the time of its release were pretty negative but I think it stands up well beside any of Spike Lee's other work. I don't think it's a surprise that Price also wrote episodes of "The Wire". 

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Bleakest book I ever read was Orwell's "1984", published not long after WW II in 1949.

"It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen" —

Considering the number of recently publicised privacy breaches by large corporations and governments you have to wonder how much of this stuff is going on right now we never hear about. The book seems pretty prophetic to me.

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I really like Peace and his peculiar style of writing. I have read the Japanese ones and also his Red Riding Quartet. The only one I wasn't struck on was Red or Dead about Shankly. He also has a new one out -Patient X.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/patient-x/david-peace/9780571336241

Totally agree with this and with Duncan’s views. Peace is an astonishing writer but bleak, bleak, bleak. The TV dramatisation of Red Riding was pretty good but does not come close to capturing the sheer nastiness of the local police, corruption, misogyny and horror of late 1970s north of England. Leeds was a particularly vile place as I remember from those days. Can you believe that the most vicious Nazi at the time in that city was called Eddie Morrison. 

The Tokyo novels are indeed hard going. The soundtrack to these books must be the Japanese band - Church of Misery, a band that seem only to do songs about serial killers. They are great live though.

The most powerful of his books has to be GB84. I read it in one sitting and wept buckets at the end.

Red of Dead is repetitive beyond. You know what hebisvtrying to do as a literary device, capture the rhythm, routine and repetitiveness of work and working class life and how these were transposed by Shankly to his team. There is only so much you can take of the ritual of Bill doing the washing up at home, the drills at the training ground etc.

Thanks for the heads up about the new book. 

I would agree that The Road is as harrowing as it gets though but what a superb writer he is. I remember reading Sutree first and then the Border trilogy. Amazing. 

 

 

 

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I will have to read the Red Riding Quartet. I remember watching the first part of the television adaptation and feeling confused at its structure- the story jumped about a good bit and there were obvious gaps in the narrative. I then watched the second part a week later and my jaw dropped- the gaps were filled in and things started to make some sort of sense. I now realise they are reflective of Peace's style.They are arguably two of my favourite pieces of British television. I felt the third part was okay but not as powerful. The books are next on my list.

GB84 is incredible, just incredible. It makes you angry, it makes you cry. It should be mandatory reading in schools. I always have to remind myself of the title, as I seem to find myself calling it SSGB (the Len Deighton novel)- but, when I think about it, this isn't as daft as it first sounds. 

We will all have to agree to disagree about Red or Dead. I loved it once I got into the rhythm of the book. I agree with @carpetfitter's summation of the use of repetition but I would add that it is also used to highlight Shankly's (or Peace's version of Shankly) obsessive compulsive nature. I've said on another thread previously that repetition is a trope of Gothic literature and I always read Peace as a modern Gothic writer.    

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  • 2 weeks later...
 

I have just finished "Tokyo Year Zero" by David Peace and I am now struggling to think of a bleaker novel I have read. I know from previous threads that David Peace is not to everyone's taste, and I would not recommend this book to anyone who has never read Peace before, but I find him to be an interesting and challenging writer. His Tokyo is a space imbued with an atmosphere of death and decay and disease and populated by defeated and vulnerable citizens, easy prey for criminals and killers. "Tokyo Year Zero" is bleaker than the three Cormac McCarthy novels I've read- "The Road", "Blood Meridian" and "Outer Dark", and they were pretty bleak.    

What particularly struck me with Tokyo Year Zero is the prose almost gave a sense of delirium. It was a bleak, fevered, nightmare of a book (and that's a compliment). For me that's where he beats Ellroy. Ellroy's prose is more stripped back so it makes for an easier (relatively speaking) read.

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