Had my first swim this side of winter in the Southern Ocean this morning. It was a tad fresh. Not as warm as the Coral Sea, but clearer.
The first swim is always a baptism. Makes me feel summer is on its glorious way. Long days, warm nights.
Fat Tuesday arrived by post last Friday and I finished it yesterday. I'm not a fast reader, so that's the best sign. Have been looking forward to getting my mitts on this book every since I struck up a friendship with Gary Davison over at PaperBooks. We've travelled parallel journeys towards seeing our books in print -- enjoying similar high points and hiccoughs -- with our publication dates alternating two or three times along the way, to say nothing of the advice and book recommendations we've bounced back and forth.
I've always loved Chris Gooch's cover design for this book (it reminds me of Skinhead and Suedehead, which I read as a young teenager), and it certainly picks up on some of the elements from the story: the montage of a knife, a fight, an Australian beach, eccies, marijuana, a couple sucking face, all set against the top half of a young bloke's closely-shaved head. Nice font too.
Anyway, if you like your story to be action-packed and fast-paced, with a liberal sprinkling of sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll -- well, all sorts of music really -- then you should give this a try. I liked picking the nuances of Spencer Hargreaves' Geordie vernacular in the narrative and the fact that I felt I was being delivered a good yarn from start to end. Particularly liked the middle section, which lends itself to the title of the book: the description of the Fat Tuesday festival at Marasa Bay and the craziness of the world which the characters get thrown into there. The vitality of the writing reflects the festival atmosphere superbly.
Well worth a read, and available from book shops in the UK, from PaperBooks or Amazon. Good on yer, Gary.
