LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2007.
Costa Book Awards 2007 Judges' comment: "A cunningly narrated story in a totally original milieu. A tale of the unexpected."
Extremely detailed piece of writing that follows a lonely middle-aged man through a disturbing obsession. He is a cutter in the 60’s fur trade, a fascinating backdrop to a menacing tale of lust, with a surprising conclusion.
Comparison: Alan Hollinghurst, Jake Arnott, Patrick Gale.
Sarah Broadhurst
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Skin Lane Synopsis
At 47, Mr. F’s working life on London’s Skin Lane is one governed by calm, precision and routine. So when he starts to have frightening, recurring nightmares, he does his best to ignore them. The images that appear in his dream are disturbing – Mr. F can't for the life of him think where they have come from. After all, he's a perfectly ordinary middle-aged man.
As London’s crooked backstreets begin to swelter in the long, hot summer of 1967, Mr. F’s nightmare becomes an obsession. A chance encounter adds a face to the body that nightly haunts him, and the torments of his sweat-drenched nights lead him – and the reader – deeper into a terrifying labyrinth of rage, desire and shame.
Part fairy-tale, part compelling evocation of a now-lost London, Neil Bartlett's long-awaited third novel is his fiercest piece of writing yet: cruel, erotic, and tender.
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Press Reviews
Neil Bartlett Press Reviews
‘Neil Bartlett is a protean polymath of a creator, ceaselessly inventing new artistic worlds - and then conquering them. 'Skin Lane' is a fiendishly taut little psycho-shocker that recalls Simenon at his most hardboiled and Highsmith at her creepiest. It made the hairs rise on the back of my neck and I still can't get them down again’ Will Self
‘Brilliantly eerie... constantly surprising... captures vividly the atmosphere of the changing London of the 60s... But it’s in his depiction of a specific kind of helpless and fearful love that Bartlett excels’ Guardian
‘Original, disturbing... beautifully written, this is an always fascinating work’
Literary Review
Author
About Neil Bartlett
Born in 1958, Neil Bartlett has spent twenty-five years at the cutting edge of British gay culture. His ground-breaking study of Oscar Wilde, Who Was That Man? paved the way for a queer re-imagining of history ; his first novel, Ready To Catch Him Should He Fall, was voted Capital Gay Book of The Year; his second, Mr Clive and Mr Page, was nominated for the Whitbread Prize. Both have since been translated into five European languages. Listing him as one of the country's fifty most significant gay cultural figures, the Independent said "Brilliant,beautiful, mischievous; few men can match Bartlett for the breadth of his exploration of gay sensibility". He also works as a director, and in 2000 was awarded an OBE for services to the theatre.
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