London and the South-East by David Szalay

London and the South-East Reviews

• 
  Nigeyb

  ‘
  London and the South-East’ is a melancholic, downbeat novel but one that completely gripped me. Unlike most novels, work is at the core of this book, and - in this instance - initially at least, it’s the dispiriting world of magazine advertising sales. This is a painfully forensic examination of the horror of the modern workplace and the work "relationships of convenience" that flow from it. Middle-aged Paul Rainey, the borderline-alcoholic protagonist, works for one of those free business magazines that arrive in the post and which no one reads.
  David Szalay has really nailed the minutiae of the workplace and, in particular, the world of selling. However sales is just the springboard for an unpredictable and original plot that was both realistic and credible, but also frequently very surprising.
  
  ‘
  London and the South-East’ is one of the most relatable books I’ve ever read. This sense of realism was further enhanced by my own familiarity with many of the streets and venues that appear in the book. Most impressively, these places were described with complete accuracy, and this attention to detail informs the entire book.
  
  ‘
  London and the South-East’ is a painful exploration of how both work and home form the basis of our identity and our happiness, such as it is, and it’s an unflinching look at commuting, selling, family, identity and compromise. It is bleak, dark, and quite brilliant. I look forward to reading more of
  David Szalay’s work.
  
  The day after I finished this book,
  David Szalay’s latest book '
  All That Man Is' made the 2016 Booker Prize Shortlist. If it's anything like as good as ‘
  London and the South-East’ then it will be well worth a read - my copy is on order and I cannot wait to read it.
  
  Since writing my review, I've looked at other reviews and noticed this book is very divisive - it seems to be the bleakness and the shortcomings of many of the characters which alienate some readers. This would probably make it a great choice for a book group. I have chosen it for my own book group so I will find out and perhaps update this review.
  
  5/5
  
  
• 
  Mark Joyce

  Exceptional. As other reviewers have noted this is in an unflinchingly bleak, depressing but also very funny novel about mid-life disappointment and emotional disintegration. It is also a “London novel” and a social document, providing an insight into the grey, soul destroying professional lives endured by the majority of the city’s commuter population. This is not a demographic that gets a great deal literary attention, probably because they don’t align easily with any of the standard Londoner stereotypes and are neither sufficiently poor nor obviously culturally interesting enough to make for compelling fiction in any but the most accomplished of hands. On the evidence of London and the South-East, David Szalay has such hands.
• 
  Anna

  Paul mieszka pod Londynem ze swoją partnerką i dwójką jej dzieci. Codziennie dojeżdża do metropolii do pracy - jest sprzedawcą, a właściwie akwizytorem. Wciska ludziom ogłoszenie w wątpliwych publikacjach. To praca niezwykle frustrująca, zwłaszcza gdy klient, który przez tydzień albo dłużej planuje podpisanie umowy, nagle rezygnuje. To praca męcząca, dająca spektakularne, ale rzadkie sukcesy. To praca, która może budzić zawiść, poczucie rywalizacji i konflikty. To także praca na tyle stresująca, że po kilku bezowocnych rozmowach trzeba wyjść do pubu na piwo. Albo dwa. Albo trzy. Albo więcej. Paul i jego koledzy palą, piją, zalewają się regularnie, budują swoje życie na kłamstwie. To kłamstwo dominuje w pracy, bo przecież by opchnąć ogłoszenie, trzeba nakadzić, nawymyślać, naobiecywać. To kłamstwo wchodzi w nawyk i w krew. Na nim buduje się relacje w pracy i w domu.
  
  Ciąg dalszy:
  https://przeczytalamksiazke.blogspot....
• 
  hopeforbooks

  W „Londynie” Davida Szalaya poznajemy Paula – czterdziestoletniego mężczyznę, pracującego w Londynie w branży reklamowej. Praca jest dużą częścią jego życia. Alkohol również. Pewnego dnia dostaje ofertę bardzo dobrej pracy od dawnego znajomego. Nie spodziewa się, jak duży będzie miało to wpływ na jego dalsze życie.
  
  „Londyn” to najdłuższa książka wydawnictwa pauza, jaką miałam okazję czytać. I choć Pauza przyzwyczaiła nas do krótkich książek, to w „Londynie” nie czuć tej objętości. Przez tę książkę się płynie, jest świetnie napisana i przetłumaczona, a co więcej ma bardzo londyński klimat, jest intrygująca i trzyma w napięciu. Bardzo podobały mi się zwroty akcji i rozwiązania fabularne. To bardzo dobra angażująca powieść, serdecznie polecam!
• 
  D.A. Holdsworth

  This is the story of Paul Rainey. Rainey is a middle-aged, middle-class middle manager in a telemarketing company, living in the suburbs of Hove. A man of middling talents - morose, moody and borderline alcoholic - the novel catches him in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Middle, mid-, midst, middling... A lot of em's there and it's probably no coincidence. The protagonist represents the average man, the mean if you will.
  
  The novel charts Rainey's downfall. He cuts a tragi-comic figure, whose life unravels in a fug of alcohol, fatigue and anti-anxiety pills. His job, his relationship, his home - they all go. He's like a modern-day Mayor of Casterbridge. But whereas Hardy lends Michael Henchard a certain epic grandeur in his descent from riches to ruin, we find Paul Rainey at the start of this novel a long way from the top. He's more - well - in the middle. And probably in the bottom half of it at that. He has to look quite hard to find a way down. But still, he finds his sewer and down he goes. If this book was a colour, it would be grey; if it was a weather forecast, it would be (...forgive me...) rain-e-y.
  
  Here's what I liked about the novel. There's a critique of consumerism that runs through it effortlessly and convincingly. Rainey's two jobs - telesales and, later, shelf-stacking in the local supermarket - are used by the author to deliver an unflinching view of the underbelly of marketing-driven capitalism. It's thought-provoking.
  
  Beyond that, the writing is capable. The author has an unerring eye for a well-appointed metaphor. When Rainey wakes up in bed one morning - fatigued, confused and having just taken an important phone call - he's described as leaning urgently, lazily across the empty bed to retrieve a cigarette from his partner's bedside table, "extending his fingers like Adam on the Sistene ceiling." The image - and the juxtaposition of grandeur and mediocrity - work nicely. Here's another. When Rainey learns his partner has been having an affair, he obsessively rifles back through his memories of her behaviour to spot the telltale signs "with the minute care of a chimp going through another chimp's hair for nits."
  
  So you see, the author can be funny. At times, really funny. The novel ends with a fantastic flourish. A small sub-plot in the book - involving blackmail, entrapment and a posh, inept friend - flourishes into a joyously absurd comic caper.
  
  London and the South-East is bleakly humourous. But, overall, more bleak than humourous - let's say 80:20. Too bleak in other words. Of course, the humour within it depends on the bleakness, I get that. But given the author's obvious talent for comedy, he would have been better off balancing the two more evenly and then we would have had a modern comedy masterpiece on our hands - and lost none of the social critique in the process. Thomas Mann, for example, was another archdeacon of bleak - in his final novel, Felix Krull, he surprised everyone by delivering a comedy masterpiece. I have no doubt this author, if he returns to the novel-form, could do the same.
  
  If he does so, I also hope he sets himself the challenge of writing a shorter book. I think he could deliver in 40-50,000 words something more effective than he achieves here in double that number. This author went on to write a true masterpiece - All That Man Is - which I
  reviewed a few months ago. This is a carefully curated set of short stories - and a masterclass in economy and concision. If you're intrigued by Szalay's work, I'd recommend you start there and then return to this one.
• 
  Sam Gilbert

  Almost unstintingly bleak and miserable.
• 
  jakesz

  Ugh, fatalna była to książka, bawiłem się absolutnie źle. XD
  
  Londyn Davida Szalaya to bardzo zdumiewająca pozycja, ale wcale nie z pozytywnych powodów, oj nie, po prostu to, co otrzymaliśmy jest tak dziwaczne, tak niezrozumiałe i tak bezcelowe, że aż trudno mi wyobrazić sobie co autor miał na myśli. Bo spoko, rozumiem wstępny zamysł - pokazujemy życie bohatera w realiach korporacyjnego Londynu na początku lat 2000., snujemy niejaką balladę na temat całości, ale na miłość boską, kto pomyślał, że tworzenie 428 stron na ten temat jest dobrym pomysłem?!
  
  W tej książce nie odnajdziemy nic interesującego, absolutne zero. Główny bohater ewidentnie cierpi na szereg schorzeń psychicznych, nie diagnozuje się i snuje się przez całą książkę, wlokąc za sobą bagaż trudnych emocji, przepełnionych cholerną biernością, nie potrafi podjąć jakiejkolwiek inicjatywy, like ever. Na dodatek, fabuła jest po prostu nieciekawa. Cała książka opiera się na zwolnieniu z pracy, znalezieniu pracy and that's it. Pomimo, że całość jest zgrabnie napisana, czyta się całkiem szybko, tak nie da się tutaj nie zastanawiać się nad tym, co tak naprawdę wynieść z tej powieści. Odpowiedź brzmi: nic. Poza smutnymi opisami życia, problemów, alkoholizmu, korporacji, zdrad, nic wartościowego tutaj nie ma. Nie potrafię nawet wpaść na żadne konstruktywne wnioski.
  
  Wynudziłem się potężnie, poziom irytacji sięgnął zenitu, po prostu nie. Aż chciałoby się rzec, że ta książka idealnie odzwierciedla jej miejsce akcji, taki przynajmniej obraz Wielkiej Brytanii w swojej świadomości.
  
  Plz, unikajcie jak ognia!
• 
  retromystery

  4.5
• 
  Phil

  I confess I'd never heard of David Szalay when this novel, with its commonplace-yet-odd title and its cover (not the one on the Goodreads page) resembling some recurring nightmare of Martin Parr''s, jumped out at me in my local library. I'm very glad it did. It's a painfully funny, hilariously true account of disappointed, self-deluding, alcoholic male middle-age. Determinedly downbeat, it's nevertheless very sharply observed, and some of the description shimmers, in a determinedly downbeat sort of way. Its subject - a man behaving badly and trying desperately to maintain his wilful lack of self-awareness in the matter - is reminiscent of Kingsley Amis at his best, and it contains at least one description of a hangover as fine as any in "Lucky Jim" or the rest of that writer's output. Unlike Amis, there's no misogyny - in fact, Szalay's characters, male and female, are all treated with a kind of rough compassion, regardless of their very obvious faults. A rare debut, one that coaxes engagement, horrible fascination, and compulsive readability out of ostensibly unpromising, unsympathetic raw material.
• 
  Tina Culbertson

  I was not familiar with author David Szalay before and discovered him via Instagram. There was a giveaway from the Book Club Cookbook and Grey Wolf Press. Lucky me, I won!
  
  While the writing is sharp this is definitely a downbeat plot. You find yourself feeling very sorry for our main character, Paul Rainey. Can you imagine a career in telemarketing sales for a magazine which, sadly, is only subscribed to by the advertisers. Paul is depressed, drinks and smokes too much and finds little solace at home. He is on a treadmill that never gets him anywhere even though he would love a change in his life.
  
  I thought it may be like The Office, but it wasn’t quite. Real life glimpse of an ordinary middle-aged man drifting along in his unsatisfactory life. The cover grabbed me straight away and so I entered for a chance to win the book.
• 
  po.czytane

  1.5
  
  Ogromne rozczarowanie. Nie wiedziałam po co to czytam, co ta książka miała wnieść do mojego życia i czym w ogóle ta powieść chciała być. Szkoda, bo poprzednia pozycja od tego autora bardzo mi się spodobała.
• 
  Michalina

  3 stars
• 
  Aharon

  England may have lost its manufacturing base, but it's still tops in alcoholism and self-loathing!
  
  Bonus: you'll get a lot of, "Oh, when are you going?"s, even after you say it's a novel.
• 
  Ian Mapp

  Certainly a unique novel. Can't think of any other that I have read that is quite as dense and really lacking in any drama or story. I waited for a big ending - which it seemed to be building to wonderfully - and it never quite materialised.
  
  Not that its a bad book - its just about a very ordinary topic. Martin works in Publishing Ad Sales in the City. They work (relatively) hard in the morning but every day, head to the pub and drink the afternoon away. Commute back to from London to Brighton and do the same next day.
  
  Family life is not much better. He's married to Heather. There's a couple of kids that hardly get a mention in the story. Martin fails to support them and life drifts on.
  
  He then gets a potential job offer from a former colleague - Eddie Jaw - and quits. He's meant to bring his team with him. Except the job doesn't materialise.
  
  He is left, middle aged, in an existential crisis about what he wants to do with his life. Can his job go in a different direction? Will he notice what his wife is up to?
  
  At times, the dense prose was amazing and really engaging. At other points, it kind of drifted over me. Either way, things transpire that you think there will be an explosive ending and it will all come to a head.
  
  Talented author and 2nd book I have read. Will be back for more.
• 
  Zach

  A real anti-hero, Paul Rainey. Dead-end, functionally alcoholic, a salesman no longer able to even make the opening pitch. His fumbles through work help illuminate — despite how unrelentingly central to life work so often seems, how unwilling it is to give up its place — just how insignificant it all is, after all. How fragile and feeble, how precarious jobs end up being, and how tentative the friendships that come from them so often are.
  
  And yet, even after his waylaid attempt to find honor and dignity and honest work (through the classic, ascetic route — manual labor), he shows how there is something, after all, in knowing what work on is best suited for, even — especially — when it's not what we desire or think is owed to us.
  
  I loved All That Man Is from a few years back, so it was good to see how Szalay works in an extended mode, and not just the vignettes. A lot more of the same type of topic — meditations on European masculinity in the broadest sense — but rewarding, entertaining, and quite fun.
• 
  Vuk Trifkovic

  It's really like a BBC4 drama mini-series. Gray and gritty. Sharp. With a surprising support cast. Pre-breakthrough Olivia Colman as Heather, Mackenzie Crook as Martin. Danny Dyer as Eddy Jaw...
  
  You kind of know the set pieces, the lines are insightful but not too deep. Yet, it all rings true and keeps you gripped until the end. You feel pretty good having caught it. A few years later, the author goes BBC1, gets lot of public acclaim with a new work. But the BBC4 feels like the original.
• 
  Anne Kadet

  I loved every page of this sad, sad book.
• 
  Jeremy

  The first half of London and the South-East by David Szalay reads like a sadder, pathetic version of Glengarry Glen Ross, just without the verbal pyrotechnics and machismo (though there is some of that too). Paul Rainey is in telesales, managing a team that barely sells anything, for a company that sole purpose is to sell ad space in business and manufacturing publications. His day starts with a 90 minute commute from the Brighton area (Hove, actually, the South-East of the title) to London (the London of the title), he usually starts drinking around noon at the local pub before, before going back after two hours to do more calls, going back to the pub, stumbling home drunk, sometimes blindingly so. When he has an encounter with an old co-worker, he thinks he has a better job offer waiting for him. But a petty grudge messes that up, and Paul is out of work. Thinking he can start again, Paul wants out of sales, but the only job he can land is for the night shift as a shelf stocker at the local Sainsbury courtesy of his smarmy neighbor. Paul is barely holding it together -- his marriage, his sobriety, his self loathing. The characters are desperate and sad, the lot of them. Populating a novel with them is not a bad thing, but it does take its toll. Szalay hints at a redemption arc for Paul, but slyly never delivers on it. Paul is stuck in his life. Work will always be work. Work will always be life. Who can say what it takes to knock him out of his torpor. And by him I mean us.
• 
  Eric Sutton

  An utterly depressing book about the sad state of modernity, but I read it in a few satisfying gulps. Paul Rainey works a dead-end sales job, drinks too much, gets high too often, exists in a perpetual state of limbo. When a lead falls though, he finds himself without work and, for the first time in his life, in control of his destiny. The problem is that pursuing passions is often dangerous and disheartening, and before long Paul is working the night shift stacking shelves at the local grocery. What sounds like a complete shambles of a novel is, in fact, an intensely readable character study. It is Szalay's debut novel, and it contains the pitfalls of a debut: dropped story lines, cliches, an over-reliance of hedonistic tendencies. That said, he moves the story fluidly, possesses a knack for dialogue, and builds the tension to a taut climax. Moreover, he explores the capitalist conundrum of utilitarianism and artistry quite well, proving that we'll go to any wretched lengths to preserve our modernist trappings. While the book is by no means a home run, he's an exciting writer for his unflinching depiction of reality. His Man Booker shortlisted All That Man Is brings a refined, matured style whose roots lie firmly in London and the South-East. Fans of the former will certainly enjoy this novel as well.
• 
  Mark

  ALL THAT MAN IS is one of my favorite books of the last decade, and I'm not surprised that LONDON AND THE SOUTH-EAST, Szalay's debut novel is a knockout. Yes, it's depressing, miserably so, but not without some humor to sustain the narrative. Paul, the protagonist, is lost, painfully so, and swimming in his own deceptions. He struggles to maintain some integrity, but loses more often than not, and immediately pays the price. He maintains little agency over his own life, and wallows in this inability. But the picture that Szalay paints of the South East in London, from its sodden streets to its miserable salesmen, its dank pubs and less than honorable populace, illustrates an author who understands the desperation of men, and just how to portray them honestly, with some sympathy, yes, but not that much. Men like Paul make their choices and are forced to live with the consequences, dire though they may be, and even when they lift themselves from the slog that is their lives, it's only to fall again, rarely, if ever, achieving either peace or grace.
• 
  Ed

  Read: Jan 2018 - 340 pp
  It must annoy the author, David Szalay, who was Man Booker Prize short-listed for "All that Man Is", to read that reviewers find echoes of Martin Amis in his work. Nonetheless, I think that is an unavoidable reaction to this book. This is not to demean Szalay's achievement, but to suggest a certain similarity of tone, character, and subject. This brilliant novel is relentlessly dark, a tragicomic look at a salesman's life spiraling downward as his career prematurely ends and his marriage falls apart. However, the novel ends not with the death of a salesman, but [SPOILER] with a glimmer of hope as "Portland Villas throbs with the dusky peace of wood pigeons. The moon floats up pale and ethereal in the sky. Tired, Paul half turns for a last sweep of the quiet street, then unlocks the door - it has panes of glass frosted to look like silk - and enters his house."