Paperboy: A memoir - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christopher Fowler is the acclaimed author of twelve novels, including Roofworld, Spanky and Soho Black, and six Bryant & May mysteries including the award-winning Full Dark House and, most recently, The Victoria Vanishes. He lives in King's Cross, London. Visit www.christopherfowler.co.uk

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When we reached Reynold's Place, where William Fowler and Mrs Fowler lived, my mother tidied my hair and pushed me toward the front door.

'You knock,' she said, knowing that I was awkward in formal situations. 'I'm sure your grandmother will be pleased to see you.'

I knocked and waited. A thumping sound grew inside the still house. The great black door creaked open. Balanced on her ebony stick, a great navy blue dress and coat appeared before me, topped with a stern face and a wicker hat like an upturned bucket.

'You're late,' said Mrs Fowler, stepping aside to let me in. 'Go into the front room and don't touch a single thing while I have words with your mother.' She did not approve of kissing. As I passed, she snatched the book from under my arm. 'You won't be needing that,' she told me, 'it'll be full of germs and bad ideas.' She left it on the rainy step outside.

Aus dem Klappentext

Superman, Dracula, Treasure Island, The Avengers...when you're ten years old you can fall in love with any story, so long as it's a good one. But what do you do if you're growing up in a home without books?

Christopher Fowler's childhood memoir captures life in suburban London through the eyes of a lonely boy who spends his days between the library and the cinema devouring novels, comics, cereal boxes - anything that might reveal a story. But it is 1960, and after fifteen years of post-war belt-tightening, his family's not quite ready to indulge a child cursed with too much imagination...

Caught between an ever-sensible, exhausted mother and a DIY-obsessed father fighting his own demons, Christopher takes refuge in words. His parents try to understand their son's peculiar obsession but they fast lose patience with him - and each other. As the war of nerves escalates to include every member of the Fowler family, something has to give, but do the tough lessons of real life mean a boy must always let go of his dreams?

By turns moving, painful and touchingly funny, Paperboy recalls the days when Vesta Chow Mein was considered the height of sophistication and reading was regarded as something that would just hurt your eyes. The story of a childhood at once eccentric and endearingly normal, this does for storytelling what Nigel Slater's Toast did for food.