Compare prices for mick jackson
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Faber and Faber Five Boys
Mick Jackson's <I>Five Boys</I> opens with young Bobby being evacuated from a blitzed London to the supposed calm of a small South Devon village. But for Bobby, the eccentrics and eccentricities of his new home are far more dangerous than the German bombs. Billeted with elderly spinster Miss Minter, Bobby soon encounters the village characters--and, identified as a Nazi spy, becomes the latest hapless victim of the local gang, the <I>Five Boys</I>. In time, though, he's befriended by one of the Five, Aldred, an organist's assistant with an overactive thyroid and a passion for a London he's seen only in books. Together, the Boys (now Six) embark on a series of adventures and pranks, climbing the church tower at night to pelt grave stones with plums, sneaking into the house of the suspiciously semaphoric Captain, and getting mixed up with, and carried off by, the mysterious Pied-Piper-esque Bee King. What starts as a straightforward evacuation story shifts into a series of more or less prankish anecdotes (a funeral for a pig, the invasion of US soldiers) before spiralling into a more disturbing denouement. But despite the hints of lurking tragedy, the author keeps the book light, capturing perfectly the bewildered innocence of his young hero, and of a lost England.<p> Jackson's debut novel <I>The Underground Man</I> was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award and won the Royal Society of Authors' First Novel Award--immediate and well-deserved recognition for Jackson's considerable skills at conscientiously re-imagining the past, but with a dash of pure eccentricity. --<I>Alan Stewart</I>
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£3.50
at Amazon.co.uk
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Picador The Underground Man
Mick Jackson makes films. It's no surprise, then, that his first novel, <I>The Underground Man</I>, should be so economically told, the action evoking a <I>mise en scène</I>. The novel takes the form of journal entries interspersed with eyewitness accounts from servants and neighbours. The Underground Man portrayed in the novel, William John Cavendish Bentinck-Scott, the Duke of Portland and a resident of Nottinghamshire, is mightily eccentric; the man was real (1800-1879), as was his eccentricity. Historical fact: the Duke commissioned eight tunnels on his estate. Present-day fact: if you walk the estate today, you see the skylights--2ft in diameter and 4in thick. But why did he build them? <p> In the last few days of the Duke's life, eccentricity burgeons and madness follows. The reader learns that his odd view of the world was shaped by early tragedy, the full truth of which is withheld until the last few pages. <p> The Underground Man is that most delectable blend of fact and fiction, one in which the intriguing details of a real life are richly explored through imagination.
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£5.59
at Amazon.co.uk
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Faber and Faber Ten Sorry Tales
Pages: 160, Hardcover, Faber and Faber
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£6.59
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Faber and Faber Ten Sorry Tales
Pages: 160, Paperback, Faber and Faber
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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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£3.99
at Amazon.co.uk
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ISIS Large Print Bks. Five Boys
Pages: 248, Hardcover, ISIS Large Print Bks.
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Availability: In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served.
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£19.94
at Amazon.co.uk
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