Look At It This Way - Hardcover

Cartwright, Justin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333548310 ISBN 13: 9780333548318

Publisher: Macmillan, 1990

Synopsis

Physical description; 275p. ; 24cm. Subject; English fiction.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

An appealingly eccentric and insouciant look at contemporary London, its new money and moribund Cockney culture, from the author of Interior (1989), etc. Tim Curtiz is an American journalist based in London, ``a poor man's Gore Vidal'' who's acquired enough celebrity through his Manhattan magazine columns to appear in American Eagle's credit card commercials along with Bernie, an elderly but ebullient Cockney actor. Another old Cockney in Tim's life is William ``Simba'' Cochrane--a destitute pensioner briefly famous in his youth for killing a marauding lion in Africa with his penknife. This humble servant of a vanished empire becomes more than a story for Tim, as does the lion (England's preeminent heraldic beast). Lions bestride Tim's consciousness--lions rampant (the London Zoo's Chaka will tie off the subplot) and lions couchant (Landseer's famous sculptures in Trafalgar Square). They cohabit oddly with Gemma, Tim's beloved small daughter; Victoria, the sexy adwoman handling the American Eagle account; and Victoria's ex-boyfriend Miles, a hotshot currency dealer whose fall from grace into a Cockney underworld Cartwright describes with relish (and with a friendly nod to Tom Wolfe's Bonfire). What you get, then, is a bumpy but enjoyable ride, moving between the zippy subplot featuring Miles, and Tim's desultory travels around town, as he sniffs out the connections between London's imperial past and polyglot present, weighs old cultural traditions (the Christmas pantomime) against weird new imports (Thai kick-boxing), and concludes that the ``real London,'' if it exists at all, has nothing to do with the fraudulent images peddled by American Eagle, in collaboration with that crafty old trouper Bernie. Despite that nod to Wolfe, this is not an attempt at a British Bonfire but a mix of straight-ahead narrative, free association, and cultural commentary--as idiosyncratic as the twitch of a lion's whiskers. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Cynicism worthy of author Martin Amis and convoluted plotting reminiscent of TV's Fawlty Towers blend in this darkly comic yarn. Narrator Tim Curtiz, an American expatriate, writes a hip, caustic column about London for a New York magazine. One of his contacts is "Simba" Cochrane, who became a minor celebrity during the 1930s after killing a berserk lion with his pen-knife. Tim becomes obsessed with the lion-as-symbol, which he sees echoed in Britain's unicorn-and-lion, a London Zoo scheme to euthanize African lions, an elderly lion's escape from captivity and urban lion-sightings. Meanwhile, Tim acts as spokesman for the "American Eagle" credit card, and supplements his own story with views of other Londoners' lives--although everything, no matter how far-ranging, slyly reconnects with his lion fixation. British author Cartwright ( Interior ) pours on the witty metaphors, offers barbed remarks on England's class system and immigrant population and entangles subplots (one character, for instance, goes from a sleazy investment-banking career to a sleazy Thai kick-boxing scam). Droll, verbose and unmistakably British in approach, this novel will be familiar yet delightful fare for fans of BBC-style situation comedy.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0333548310
• ISBN 13: 9780333548318
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256