Penguin Underground Lines: Twelve Stories from Twelve Authors

by John Lanchester

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Tube, 12 of Penguin's favourite writers have been asked to tell their story of London in about 15,000 words (or in one case, no words at all), each inspired by a different Underground line. While the responses ranged from the polemical to the fantastical, the personal to the societal, they offer something for every taste. Read individually they're delightful small reads - pulled together they offer a particular portrait of a global city.

Mind the Child by Camila Batmanghelidjh and Kids Company (The Victoria Line)
The 32 Stops by Danny Dorling (The Central Line)
Buttoned-Up by Fantastic Man (The East London Line)
What We Talk About When We Talk About the Tube by John Lanchester (The District Line)
A Northern Line Minute by William Leith (The Northern Line)
A Good Parcel of English Soil by Richard Mabey (The Metropolitan Line)
Earthbound by Paul Morley (The Bakerloo Line)
A History of Capitalism According to the Jubilee Line by John O'Farrell (The Jubilee Line)
Drift by Philippe Parreno (The Hammersmith and City Line)
Waterloo-City, City-Waterloo by Leanne Shapton (The Waterloo and City Line)
Heads and Straights by Lucy Wadham (The Circle Line)
The Blue Riband by Peter York (The Piccadilly Line)

Genres: London

1500 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2013

About the author

John Lanchester is the author of four novels and three books of non-fiction. He was born in Germany and moved to Hong Kong. He studied in UK. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and was awarded the 2008 E.M. Forster Award. He lives in London.

Reviews

[Mark Speed · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was going to write individual reviews for each of these books. A couple of them were okay, but most of them were self-inflating, irrelevant nonsense. I'm sure it's great to be asked to write for a special edition like this by Penguin - but you might at least make sure you're got something worthwhile to write before you sign the contract.

[Rachel Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short, 100 page books, tangentially about the tube, to fill the time between Aldgate and Uxbridge.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mixed bag, as any anthology would be - the twelve books in this box are only loosely connected by the fact that each of them is (more or less loosely) linked to an underground line. For all that, I've read and enjoyed things I would never have picked up otherwise, and overall it feels like something greater than the sum of its parts.