Look at It This Way

by Justin Cartwright

This stylish and delightful novel leads the reader on a bracing romp through the topsy-turvy world of today's London via a diverse cast of characters. The narrator is Tim Curtiz, an expatriate American journalist ("a poor man's Gore Vidal") who writes a bi-weekly letter from London for a New York magazine. Prowling about in his shiny new Mercedes, on the look-out for local color and illuminating ironies, Tim encounters a strange - and strangely connected - cavalcade of eccentrics: an over-the-hill East End actor with a bit part in a commercial and an eye on the big chance; a young advertising woman bedeviled by boyfriend troubles and a leaky condo; a decrepit pensioner who once fended off (and killed!) an attacking lion with a pen knife; a cashiered currency trader who falls headfirst into a money-laundering scam; and an aging lion slated to be "euthanized." As we follow the intersecting arcs of these disparate lives, we discover a city that has been brokered, blighted, and betrayed - but which also somehow remains the London town of yore: a city where people still find true love, where cockeyed Cockney dreams come true, and where - at least sometimes - malefactors are fed to the lions. On the British publication of Look at It This Way, the London Sunday Times wrote of this diverting and perceptive novel that it "does for London what Bonfire of the Vanities did for New York." Readers will find the comparison an apt one.

Genres: Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Justin Cartwright (born 1945) is a British novelist.

He was born in South Africa, where his father was the editor of the Rand Daily Mail newspaper, and was educated there, in the United States and at Trinity College, Oxford. Cartwright has worked in advertising and has directed documentaries, films and television commercials. He managed election broadcasts, first for the Liberal Party and then the SDP-Liberal Alliance during the 1979, 1983 and 1987 British general elections. For his work on election broadcasts, Cartwright was appointed an MBE.

Cartwright had a wife, Penny, and two sons.

Reviews

[Ilya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cartwright is such a terrific sentence-crafter and observation-maker. The story itself is not so strong. Having read the magnificent Other People's Money, I feel that is the novel this book wants to be.

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm going to go against the grain and tap out halfway through. I'm kind of over the whole quirky cast of characters comes together through circumstances plot, which was probably fresh in 1992 when this was written. Also, in the first chapter, a journalist pays someone for an interview (or you at least hear the guy ask for it and the writer walks away with an interview), which is a damaging trope that most news orgs find highly unethical, so I rolled my eyes. Anyway, I have a lot to read right now.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very unique. This style of writing is not around much at all these days, it's almost poetic.

A fantastic glimpse of intertwined lives, problems and emotions.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant book, though the ending was somewhat rushed I look forward to the final installment, particularly as one of the characters is going to make more of an appearance. His observations about London and its people are witty and show that little has changed in the city in the last twenty years.

[Rachel Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tale of early 90s London through the eyes of a journalist, a marketing exec, a leftover from the music hall, a stockbroker, the criminal underbelly, and a senile OAP who once killed a Kenyan lion. Equally rude about city boys, actors, cockneys, artists, widows, and Americans, it shows London becoming an economic powerhouse, leaving behind those who can't keep up.

[Louis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clever story focused on 80's London, which is as relevant today.

[Colby · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whimsy