Palace Pier

by Keith Waterhouse

In the early 1960s, a golden age for newly-discovered writers, Chris Duffy
was something of a nearly man. His debut novel was reasonably successful;
his second was turned down as being too like the first. Thanks to procrastination
and heavy drinking, he has published nothing since.

Settled now in Brighton, where he ekes out a living running a market bric-a-brac
stall, Duffy dreams of the blurred decades that seem to have slipped through his
where did it all go wrong? But during one confusing weekend, on the
opening days of the Brighton Literary Festival, everything looks set to change.
Lurching through the razzmatazz of stilt-walkers, mime artists and unicyclists, Duffy
learns of the existence of a long-lost manuscript by a famous novelist, now dead,
and resolves to get hold of it, pass it off as his own and thus give his wilted career
a kick-start.

Unfortunately, little in Duffy's disordered life ever runs smoothly, particularly on this
crowded weekend...

Genres: Fiction, Humor

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 3, 2003

About the author

Keith Spencer Waterhouse CBE, was a novelist, newspaper columnist, and the writer of many television series.

Reviews

[Nigeyb · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only really know Keith Waterhouse for the wonderful Billy Liar however it turns out he was a prolific novelist, playwright, satirist, columnist etc who wrote every day of his life. His other writing credits include screenplays or scripts for Worzel Gummidge, A Kind of Loving, Whistle Down The Wind, and Budgie, all of which impress me.

Palace Pier is set in Brighton and Hove, my home town, which adds to my enjoyment of any book (the same for books set in London). It’s about a writer called Chris Duffy, a nearly man, who after a promising first novel has never written again. Haunted by what might have been, he learns of an unpublished manuscript by none other than Patrick Hamilton (another box ticked) which he wants to pass off as his own.

If you like books about Brighton and Hove, or have any interest in Patrick Hamilton, then this short novel is well worth a few hours of your time, and this despite Chris Duffy being a very unsympathetic character. Duffy's epiphany at the book’s conclusion makes the rest of the book well worth sticking with. And, for Hamilton fans like me, the book contains a great parody of Patrick Hamilton's writing (complete with Komic Kapitals).

3/5

[Edward Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hmm.

This seems to be the only 5-star review for Palace Pier.

I'm surprised by this because I really liked the book.

Obviously, it's no 'Billy Liar' (or 'Billy Liar on the Moon', for that matter), but it's still very fresh, very funny and very engaging.

Fans of Patrick Hamilton will enjoy.

[Deborah]

It takes a brave author to write about a mediocre writer who has failed to find a publisher for his second and subsequent novels after achieving flash-in-the-pan success with his first. Waterhouse is that author, and Palace Pier the mordantly humorous result. As a relative newcomer to Brighton, I found it highly entertaining to visit Brighton's shabby pubs and lodging houses in the company of the vodka-addled and deluded Chris Duffy, encountering Brighton's notoriously free-wheeling yet suspicious and stubborn inhabitants, all in the context of its most famous landmarks, including one unmistakable literary one. Huge fun, and now proudly part of my 'Sussex authors with chops' collection.

[Rohase Piercy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being a washed-up writer living in Brighton myself, I really should have read this novel about a washed-up writer living in Brighton sooner ... it's been around since 2003 and it's a good laugh, in a depressing sort of way.
Following the success of his first novel, Chris Duffy has been experiencing a debilitating period of writer's block. A forty-year period, to be crushingly accurate, as 'Razzle Dazzle' was published in the 1960s when he was living in Blackpool, and nothing he's been able to come up with since has managed to convince an agent that he's worth taking on for a second round.
Now living in Brighton in a seedy lodging house, spending his time staggering from pub to pub with brief interludes in the bed of his landlady Maureen, Duffy indulges in fantasies of being 'rediscovered' whilst railing internally against other, more successful writers - including Brighton writer Patrick Hamilton - who seem to have hit upon the 'lucky streak' that's so far eluded him.
This year's May Festival having a literary theme, Duffy staggers along to suitable venues - the Festival Club, and Dome, the Metropole - in search of old contacts to renew, and hopefully new agents to impress. The trouble is, he doesn't have a manuscript to offer, his second novel having been rejected six times and left to rot, its whereabouts forgotten, and the Muse having deserted him years ago.
His landlady, Maureen, however, DOES claim to have an unpublished manuscript, entitled 'Palace Pier', lying about the place somewhere ... if only Duffy could locate it. When he finally does, he finds it bears the unmistakeable hallmark of 'Mister Hamilton's' writing style - and Mister Hamilton, of course, has been conveniently dead for forty years.
What to do? Could he possibly pass off 'Palace Pier' as his own work to the third-rate agent who's offered to take him on, in the absence of anyone more promising?
The moment of self-realisation at the end, which takes place, appropriately enough, on the Palace Pier, should be unbearably sad, but Keith Waterhouse's sardonic style lifts it out of the slough of self-pity and makes it something of an epiphany: 'Then it hits him, the 'Click!' inside the head, 'the sound which a noise makes when it abruptly ceases', which occurs in the opening lines of Mister Hamilton's novel 'Hangover Square' ... Duffy cannot write.' ...'Duffy remembers - no, he doesn't remember, he retains, like a fishbone in the throat, a passage from Mister James M Cain's 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' which he chanced to be reading when the postman rang once and the rejected script of 'The Golden Mile' came back for the sixth and final time ...'
Wonderful stuff that really packs a punch, and the seedy side of Brighton is depicted (in updated noughties version) every bit as vividly as it is in Mister Graham Greene's 'Brighton Rock'.
Aspiring writers living in Brighton: read, mark and inwardly digest ...

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once, many years ago, Chris Duffy wrote a novel that nearly made his name. A second was rejected by his publisher as being too similar to his first. Now, after drink and chronic procrastination have destroyed any hope of a literary career (apart from two short letters to the Guardian which he keeps in his wallet) he finds himself running a dodgy antiques stall in Brighton and living in a boarding house that could be straight out of a novel by Patrick Hamilton. Hamilton, in fact, has a surprising role to play in Duffy’s life when he learns of the existence of the manuscript of his final, unpublished novel, which his landlady has inherited and keeps hidden. Over the course of a rather Hamiltonian weekend (there are a lot of pubs in this book) and against the backdrop of the Brighton Literary Festival, Duffy launches a plan to find the manuscript and pass it off as his own work. With sharp insights into the publishing world and literary festivals, Palace Pier is a blackly funny tale of the (failed) writer’s life and an affectionate portrait of a city that Keith Waterhouse loved.

[Nicola]

Very funny, very clever, and a real enjoyment for anyone who knows Brighton well. Keith Waterhouse takes the considerable risk of writing about a failed writer hoping to pass off a purloined typescript supposedly by Patrick Hamilton as his own work...if he can manage to scrape any money out of it faced with the host of ex-lovers, not quite ex-wives, business rivals and general grifters who surround his chaotic, vodka-soaked world. But the book is in the hands of a master writer and I imagine it was great fun writing cod Hamilton- his last alcohol-fuelled work, so naturally not his best. The picture of a weekend in Brighton at festival time,with Duffy's constant grumpy attempts to avoid the jugglers, living statues and tambourines, to get 'above the festival treeline', are beautifully drawn. It reflects accurately the gender relations of that era and section of culture, with plenty of casual and manipulative sex from men and women, and a bit of bedroom farce. It's the work of an entertaining cynic, who teases the reader wonderfully in the final scene, and ends with some unexpected redemption for Duffy.

[Zzoeeeee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Writers writing about writers hardly ever works, this being the only account that I find reasonably believable. The descriptions of Brighton are good though.

[John Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was OK, bit silly. Enjoyed it all the same.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as the Waterhouse I remember from the past - like the central character he's rather past his best by this latish novel.

[Ian Simpson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book where little happens and that is the point. Quite nicely written with promising characters that never really go anywhere.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely comedy about the shenanigans of a once published author Chris Duffy. Also a nice homage to the great Patrick Hamilton.