Bleeding London - Hardcover

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A journey of revenge takes Mick Wilton to London, whose streets he stumbles through as he searches for six men said to have raped his girlfriend. Also out prowling is Stuart London, a man obsessed with walking every street of the city whose name he bears. A Japanese-British woman named Judy Tanaka, who works in a bookstore specializing in London lore, is avid to add more lovers to her personalized map of sexual conquests. How, why, and when these three characters meet makes for a circuitous ramble through England's great city. Mick's acts of revenge, which vary from cruel to comic to kinky, will not please everyone, yet oddly enough by the story's end, most readers will find themselves respecting him as an ethical man. A book whose setting becomes as much a character as the people who pepper its pages, Bleeding London is dark, droll, and suspenseful. British author Nicholson has ten novels to his credit, including Still Life with Volkswagens (LJ 8/95). Recommended for general fiction collections.?Keddy Ann Outlaw, Harris Cty. P.L., Houston, Tex.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The prolific Nicholson's (Footsucker, 1996, etc.) 11th novel is a savagely funny, wayward, loving celebration of London's enchantments and strangeness. The power of an ancient city to seduce is demonstrated in the lives of three vividly particularized characters: Mick, a bright, laconic tough from Sheffield who has come to London seeking revenge on a group of men who, he believes, raped his stripper girlfriend; Judy, a young woman of mixed parentage (her father is Japanese, her mother British) attempting to make this city she obsessively loves her own; and Stuart, the urbane, self-satisfied head of an agency that offers an exotic array of walking tours. Anxious to find some new way to demonstrate his idiosyncratic mastery of London, Stuart hits on the idea of walking every one of its streets, a project that--if he walks ten miles a day, five days a week--should take some three years. Mick, meanwhile, who at first has a provincial's undisguised dislike and distrust of the vast, chaotic city, finds himself disturbed and intrigued by it as he goes in search of his miscreants. These parallel quests, each increasingly quixotic, allow Nicholson to poke satiric fun at London's citizens, catalogue some lively fragments of its history and geography, and anatomize the ways in which we make a city our own. In the end, Mick finds himself liberated by the possibilities of life in the city; Stuart, made arrogant by his supposed mastery of it, is grimly humbled; and Judy hits upon a weirdly transcendent way of making herself permanently one with it. The plot takes a while to build up speed, and the unfiltered blizzard of facts about London is sometimes dizzying, but Nicholson's satirical eye, his obvious love of the city, and his skill at fielding odd, convincing characters overcome any problems. A delightful fiction, and a wonderfully exasperated love letter to a great city. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.