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A, B & E
A gangster's moll on the run from her murderous husband who she betrayed between the sheets, has lost everything and has to sing for her supper. She does this by holding court in bars at a Club 18-30 holiday resort by day and capturing prey to take her into a hotel room by night. Back in Britain, an NHS nurse is under siege from her own abusive patients. She resolves to treat not just their ailing bodies, but their afflicted souls. Two avenging angels, one incendiary convergence.
184 pages, Paperback
First published September 21, 2009
13 people want to read
About the author
Marc Nash
18 books467 followers1) WORDS – voice
2) WORDS – communing
3) WORDS – emotional intelligence
4) WORDS – identity
5) WORDS – metaphor
6) WORDS – origins
7) WORDS – Origins
viii) WORDS – ideas
9) WORDS – alchemy
10)WORDS – trove
11)WORDS – meaning
12)WORDS – ambiguity
13)WORDS – stricture
14)WORDS – porousness
15)WORDS – vapour trails
16)WORDS – lyricism
17)WORDS – Being
18)WORDS – metastasis
19)WORDS – play
20)WORDS – inoculation against mortality
20 years in the counterculture working at Rough Trade Record Shop, now working in freedom of expression NGO world. I hope my books are more than just the sum of the above. I used to be a playwright, but then started writing more for dancers and physical theatre performers. I like a challenge and I like to move out of my comfort zone. Now I’m a novelist and am writing more ‘voice’ than I ever did as a playwright. Go figure!
My Booktube review site: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmpw...
2) WORDS – communing
3) WORDS – emotional intelligence
4) WORDS – identity
5) WORDS – metaphor
6) WORDS – origins
7) WORDS – Origins
viii) WORDS – ideas
9) WORDS – alchemy
10)WORDS – trove
11)WORDS – meaning
12)WORDS – ambiguity
13)WORDS – stricture
14)WORDS – porousness
15)WORDS – vapour trails
16)WORDS – lyricism
17)WORDS – Being
18)WORDS – metastasis
19)WORDS – play
20)WORDS – inoculation against mortality
20 years in the counterculture working at Rough Trade Record Shop, now working in freedom of expression NGO world. I hope my books are more than just the sum of the above. I used to be a playwright, but then started writing more for dancers and physical theatre performers. I like a challenge and I like to move out of my comfort zone. Now I’m a novelist and am writing more ‘voice’ than I ever did as a playwright. Go figure!
My Booktube review site: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmpw...
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 6, 2013
This is a challenging read. Written in the first person, it reads like a one sided conversation...following the two thought paths of Karen Dash as she describes and justifies her life in exile, and of a seemingly unrelated NHS nurse back in London. The two are connected - but you'll have to read the book to find out how (Spoilers are not my style!). The story is a series of episodes in the two women's lives. Some in the past, some current. The story actually is less important than the language and word play. Marc Nash is a master word player. He claims not to be a poet but, for me his writing has more in common with poetry than it has with narrative fiction. Words dance across the pages - sometimes to music that is lyrical and symphonic, at other times clashing and jarring - almost painful to read. He twists the meaning of words and phrases, making familiar words unfamiliar, surprising the reader with the juxtaposition of words, creating imagery that shocks, forcing us to reconsider the language we have grown up with. You may need a dictionary as your constant companion as you read this book.
This is a book for anyone who wants something different and challenging, who relishes a book that requires some effort in the reading. If you want a quick read that makes no demands on your grey cells then it is not the book for you!
This is a book for anyone who wants something different and challenging, who relishes a book that requires some effort in the reading. If you want a quick read that makes no demands on your grey cells then it is not the book for you!
January 8, 2012
Words. I thought I knew a lot of them, but it seems I was wrong. After reading A B & E by Marc Nash, I feel like a chimp who’s been taught to screech out a few word-like sounds, or maybe a defrosted caveman educated by Katie Price. Not sure which is worse.
I’m not just talking about volume of vocabulary employed, but the arrangement. The associations, the twists of meaning against itself and back again, as a reader you can’t help but admire the artistry in the design. A B & E, though only a short novel (184 pages in paperback), took me a rather long time to read, because it’s dense. Rich. Every word demands your focus, every play on words requires your comprehension ... and thank Jebus for the built-in dictionary function in the Kindle, because without that I’d still be scratching my head at irruption, lordotic and modegreened (though to honest, even the Kindle dictionary struggled with mondegreened, and I had to hit up Wikipedia). The pressure to review such a bold, skilled experimental novel, it’s kind of daunting.
Me like book. Book good.
The protagonist is Karen Dash (an alias), a gangster’s moll hiding out in Corfu away from the vengeful eye of her criminal husband. She’d cheated on Damon with his chauffeur, and for her the penalty is Grecian exile.
Karen tells her story to listener or listeners unseen (though that becomes clearer later on) in a first-person monologue. The storytelling seems to take place almost exclusively in bars, with trays of cocktails always at hand to help out – between the chapters are cocktail recipes, perhaps put there to aid the person wanting a more empathetic reading experience.
Me like booze. Book like booze. Me like book.
My incipient low culture-itis reared its virulent head early on in the book, and I found myself picturing Karen as more perverse and intellectual Samantha Jones from Sex and the City, a forty-something cougar with a cosmopolitan in one hand and a young man’s pride and joy in the other. Her tale moves between past and present, from how she met Damon and came to cheat on him, to her nights of drinking and seduction, a short cycle which seems to repeat itself almost endlessly.
There’s a subplot with a secondary protagonist running alongside Karen’s tale of decadent woe, a hospital nurse in the UK. The connection between the two isn’t obvious, but there is a pleasing twist which makes having followed her progress worthwhile.
I found the early chapters more challenging than the latter. I’m not sure if that’s because of the sometimes obscure Greek mythology references in the first half (though I do like my Greek mythology), or if I was simply getting into the groove of Nash’s style. Here is a writer who seems to have no fear of ignoring literary conventions and the predictable requirements of mainstream fiction. Nash writes with an emphasis on the writing. If you’re after a James Patterson style page-turner, you might want to look elsewhere. If you’re after the latest addition to the Twilight saga, why are you even here? If, however, you appreciate exquisite writing which demonstrates with great flexibility just what this English language of ours is capable of, then I would have no hesitation in recommending A B & E to you.
Here. Read Book. Book Good.
I’m not just talking about volume of vocabulary employed, but the arrangement. The associations, the twists of meaning against itself and back again, as a reader you can’t help but admire the artistry in the design. A B & E, though only a short novel (184 pages in paperback), took me a rather long time to read, because it’s dense. Rich. Every word demands your focus, every play on words requires your comprehension ... and thank Jebus for the built-in dictionary function in the Kindle, because without that I’d still be scratching my head at irruption, lordotic and modegreened (though to honest, even the Kindle dictionary struggled with mondegreened, and I had to hit up Wikipedia). The pressure to review such a bold, skilled experimental novel, it’s kind of daunting.
Me like book. Book good.
The protagonist is Karen Dash (an alias), a gangster’s moll hiding out in Corfu away from the vengeful eye of her criminal husband. She’d cheated on Damon with his chauffeur, and for her the penalty is Grecian exile.
Karen tells her story to listener or listeners unseen (though that becomes clearer later on) in a first-person monologue. The storytelling seems to take place almost exclusively in bars, with trays of cocktails always at hand to help out – between the chapters are cocktail recipes, perhaps put there to aid the person wanting a more empathetic reading experience.
Me like booze. Book like booze. Me like book.
My incipient low culture-itis reared its virulent head early on in the book, and I found myself picturing Karen as more perverse and intellectual Samantha Jones from Sex and the City, a forty-something cougar with a cosmopolitan in one hand and a young man’s pride and joy in the other. Her tale moves between past and present, from how she met Damon and came to cheat on him, to her nights of drinking and seduction, a short cycle which seems to repeat itself almost endlessly.
There’s a subplot with a secondary protagonist running alongside Karen’s tale of decadent woe, a hospital nurse in the UK. The connection between the two isn’t obvious, but there is a pleasing twist which makes having followed her progress worthwhile.
I found the early chapters more challenging than the latter. I’m not sure if that’s because of the sometimes obscure Greek mythology references in the first half (though I do like my Greek mythology), or if I was simply getting into the groove of Nash’s style. Here is a writer who seems to have no fear of ignoring literary conventions and the predictable requirements of mainstream fiction. Nash writes with an emphasis on the writing. If you’re after a James Patterson style page-turner, you might want to look elsewhere. If you’re after the latest addition to the Twilight saga, why are you even here? If, however, you appreciate exquisite writing which demonstrates with great flexibility just what this English language of ours is capable of, then I would have no hesitation in recommending A B & E to you.
Here. Read Book. Book Good.
February 17, 2011
I'd been reading and enjoying Marc Nash's flash fiction for a few months, which led me to buy his book, so I knew he was going to play with language but didn't realise how intense a read that would be over a full-length novel or quite how it would make me feel.
Narrated by two female characters, a Gangster's Moll hiding out on Corfu and a nurse back home in the UK, whose connection isn't revealed until the very end, I went through just about every emotion. I felt seduced, soothed, enticed, coaxed but also battered and bruised by the language and wordplay and loved every minute of it. The book is, in effect, two monologues which Marc switches between throughout this experimental novel. Read it if you're interested in discovering the unique way in which Marc Nash bends and stretches our versatile language.
Narrated by two female characters, a Gangster's Moll hiding out on Corfu and a nurse back home in the UK, whose connection isn't revealed until the very end, I went through just about every emotion. I felt seduced, soothed, enticed, coaxed but also battered and bruised by the language and wordplay and loved every minute of it. The book is, in effect, two monologues which Marc switches between throughout this experimental novel. Read it if you're interested in discovering the unique way in which Marc Nash bends and stretches our versatile language.
August 30, 2018
This was a very "wordy" book! LOL! We have two female protagonists and thus, two shared points of view! Marc Nash has an exceptional vocabulary so you may want to keep a dictionary handy! I gave it 4 stars!
March 24, 2010
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
As far as I can tell, Marc Nash's A, B & E is not really a narrative novel per se, but more like a 185-page prose poem; and while that's a perfectly valid type of book to write and publish, I unfortunately have a standing policy at CCLaP not to review poetic projects, simply because they clash badly with the ultra-analytical style of critiquing that I do here. I mean, don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the 25 or so pages of this that I read; but there precisely belies why I don't review such books, because the only thing I can come up with to explain why I liked it is, "Um, because it's all, um, weird and sh-t." To do a decent review of such books requires an entire skill set that I simply do not possess, which is why today I'm recusing myself from giving A, B & E a score, despite my standing promise here to review any book that a person takes the trouble to send to me. Obviously there are exceptions to that promise (I don't review children's literature either, for example), and as always I encourage interested authors and presses to look over CCLaP's publicly posted submission guidelines before sending in a book for possible review.
Out of 10: N/A
As far as I can tell, Marc Nash's A, B & E is not really a narrative novel per se, but more like a 185-page prose poem; and while that's a perfectly valid type of book to write and publish, I unfortunately have a standing policy at CCLaP not to review poetic projects, simply because they clash badly with the ultra-analytical style of critiquing that I do here. I mean, don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the 25 or so pages of this that I read; but there precisely belies why I don't review such books, because the only thing I can come up with to explain why I liked it is, "Um, because it's all, um, weird and sh-t." To do a decent review of such books requires an entire skill set that I simply do not possess, which is why today I'm recusing myself from giving A, B & E a score, despite my standing promise here to review any book that a person takes the trouble to send to me. Obviously there are exceptions to that promise (I don't review children's literature either, for example), and as always I encourage interested authors and presses to look over CCLaP's publicly posted submission guidelines before sending in a book for possible review.
Out of 10: N/A
December 4, 2010
wildly unconventional and totally readable.
May 18, 2015
Loved the book. Marc has a unique and special way to play with the English language and give you food for thought.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews