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Unreal City: Limited Edition
Strolling through this wide sweep, gazing across the fleet of trains bound for Paris or Brussels, the powder blue steel vaulting soaring above them, the inside of a giant whale's ribcage, a hymn to the infrastructure of our hyper-connected age; like Jonah swallowed up by it all, by the hum of the giant extractor fans, the deep hum at the heart of it all - back here, home again, lost in London...
With a property portfolio consisting of a beach hut in Kent, and a career as evanescent as it is unprofitable, the narrator of Unreal City is a flaneur fallen on hard times, a creative bewildered by the slick speed of the digital age, watching as the sculptors and painters and bon viveurs begin to slip away and the advertising hipsters take over old stomping grounds.
From the nights in old Soho, where an anonymous green door was the gateway to a decadently dingy paradise, to the days amid the shabby post-industrial elegance of Hackney's canalside warehouses, this is a nostalgic love song to the drifters, the artists, the glamorous misfits, the degenerate waifs and the barmaid-enchantresses of the capital's backstreets and shadowy corners.
The pages in this special edition are unbound, gathered in a sleeve, and annotated by the legendary producer and DJ Andrew Weatherall. Accompanying the pages are a six-track original CD soundtrack composed by Andrew, and a 10-inch record containing one remix.
With a property portfolio consisting of a beach hut in Kent, and a career as evanescent as it is unprofitable, the narrator of Unreal City is a flaneur fallen on hard times, a creative bewildered by the slick speed of the digital age, watching as the sculptors and painters and bon viveurs begin to slip away and the advertising hipsters take over old stomping grounds.
From the nights in old Soho, where an anonymous green door was the gateway to a decadently dingy paradise, to the days amid the shabby post-industrial elegance of Hackney's canalside warehouses, this is a nostalgic love song to the drifters, the artists, the glamorous misfits, the degenerate waifs and the barmaid-enchantresses of the capital's backstreets and shadowy corners.
The pages in this special edition are unbound, gathered in a sleeve, and annotated by the legendary producer and DJ Andrew Weatherall. Accompanying the pages are a six-track original CD soundtrack composed by Andrew, and a 10-inch record containing one remix.
- GenresFiction
224 pages, Paperback
First published September 5, 2013
5 people are currently reading
61 people want to read
About the author
Michael Smith
3 books8 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Michael Smith (born 1976) is an English writer, broadcaster and film-maker.
Michael Smith (born 1976) is an English writer, broadcaster and film-maker.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 31, 2019
A total waste of my reading time.
August 24, 2022
Beam me up, softboi
April 19, 2014
Out on the piss in Paris and London. Smith's narrator is a broken-down 30(40?)-something chancer reduced to living in a beach-hut, who decides to go back to the delights of central London, rediscovering the worlds of Soho and Shoreditch and the new squatlands out in the East (this is written pre-Olympics. We can now see a distinct moment in London writing where everyone was anticipating 2012), with a cross-Channel interlude to make a few quick observations of how the French are getting on. It all moves along jolly well in short instalments, all drinker's stories and fairly well-written though not completely avoiding cliches. Also the social observations dip at times in to style-mag gloop about "tectonic plates of art and commerce colliding" or whatever, which doesn't fit as he's already told us the artists got tamed and assimilated by corporate sponsorship long ago, and most of them were wide-boys anyway. Poking fun at "creative industries" is pretty stale now. His view of Paris seems to forget that city (like London) had major riots within recent years. Altogether this is the view from some chatty old stranger you meet in a Soho bar, who seems funny enough with his tales of being conned by homeless pretend drug dealers and his 90s memories, which he'd probably be happy to crank out for a weekend magazine. That might be the secret of how he can afford to live like this.
August 17, 2018
3.3 / 5 stars
This book was one that I featured in my '5 star TBR prediction' video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87-6J...), and although it clearly was a slight disappointment as it fell 1.7 stars short, it was the kind of change of pace that I've been looking for lately in my reading, and definitely the type of book I enjoy reading.
The story follows a homeless, jobless flâneur as he leaves his beach hut for the winter and heads back to London, with a detour into Paris. There isn't a plot as such; the book comprises his musings and noticings. I won't lie that I enjoyed the writing style more at the beginning than the end, when it seemed to loose some of the beauty it has in its opening chapters.
I don't feel wise or worldly enough (or familiar enough with London) to pick up on some of the flaws in it the way other reviews do, though I can certainly see where they're coming from.
Nevertheless, while the narrator occasionally irked me, I'm pleased to have read it.
This book was one that I featured in my '5 star TBR prediction' video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87-6J...), and although it clearly was a slight disappointment as it fell 1.7 stars short, it was the kind of change of pace that I've been looking for lately in my reading, and definitely the type of book I enjoy reading.
The story follows a homeless, jobless flâneur as he leaves his beach hut for the winter and heads back to London, with a detour into Paris. There isn't a plot as such; the book comprises his musings and noticings. I won't lie that I enjoyed the writing style more at the beginning than the end, when it seemed to loose some of the beauty it has in its opening chapters.
I don't feel wise or worldly enough (or familiar enough with London) to pick up on some of the flaws in it the way other reviews do, though I can certainly see where they're coming from.
Nevertheless, while the narrator occasionally irked me, I'm pleased to have read it.
December 29, 2023
There's just not enough of it....
The year started with a 5 star review of another of his three published books, Playboy Giro, and ends on this.... all 127 pages of it. With gaps between chapters. Not often I have to limit my reading.
The book tells the an autobiography of Smith, as he runs out of money (and presumably the summer) living in a beach hut with no electricity in Kent. He moves back to London to reminisce and cast observations of a changing city, as it becomes corporately homogenised. As a Flaneur, he wanders the streets of the East End (Hoxton, Shoreditch) and the West End (Soho).
Along the way, he attends the funeral of the barkeep from the Colony Rooms, sometimes applies for work, sometimes deals with his bank.
The prose is exquisite - poetic, melancholic and wistfully looking at the past and how things will "never be as good as they used to be".
The year started with a 5 star review of another of his three published books, Playboy Giro, and ends on this.... all 127 pages of it. With gaps between chapters. Not often I have to limit my reading.
The book tells the an autobiography of Smith, as he runs out of money (and presumably the summer) living in a beach hut with no electricity in Kent. He moves back to London to reminisce and cast observations of a changing city, as it becomes corporately homogenised. As a Flaneur, he wanders the streets of the East End (Hoxton, Shoreditch) and the West End (Soho).
Along the way, he attends the funeral of the barkeep from the Colony Rooms, sometimes applies for work, sometimes deals with his bank.
The prose is exquisite - poetic, melancholic and wistfully looking at the past and how things will "never be as good as they used to be".
September 13, 2024
Shit man, what a book. I picked this up in my local charity bookshop, admittedly not expecting to actually read it. Boy am I glad that I did. Each ‘scene’ contains words that nourish the soul and when put in succession, radicalise you into doing something to change your life. A love letter to London and her spawn of surrounding areas, it’s raw and gritty and encapsulates the magnetism of the big city.
I finished this book in my local park with a proper mug of tea (how it should be done) and I immediately wanted to start reading from the beginning again. I’m excited to revisit this again in the future, perhaps with a different outlook, we’ll see.
If anyone can recommend some other autobiographical (or not autobiographical), prose-based odes to cities that would be greatly appreciated x
I finished this book in my local park with a proper mug of tea (how it should be done) and I immediately wanted to start reading from the beginning again. I’m excited to revisit this again in the future, perhaps with a different outlook, we’ll see.
If anyone can recommend some other autobiographical (or not autobiographical), prose-based odes to cities that would be greatly appreciated x
January 3, 2018
A wending and beautifully textured walk through London, written with the wide eyed wonder of an outsider, and yet the sharply observed detail of a Londoner.
As fine an ode to the people and places of London as you’ll read, which I did, in one sitting!
As fine an ode to the people and places of London as you’ll read, which I did, in one sitting!
December 2, 2017
Unreal City by Michael Smith was a strange read. I don't know if I liked it or not.
September 3, 2025
creates a fantastically vivid image of one (debaucherous) side of life in London
January 10, 2023
This could be a good read at 2 in the morning, as a way to doze off given the short, staccatic sentences and chapters, particularly written as letters to the city, or corners of it. At times, it can read like a collection of poetry, a lyric sequence, or a verse narrative. While it is part of its charm, it can become a bit confusing in looking at a cohesive structure, as a reader wo tries to make sense of the work. But perhaps, when one needs to have a more abstract set of thoughts, or broken insights, when trying to produce a concrete view of going through the city, this can work since it looks at the urban landscape in fragments, and not as a living being, where the sum of its parts creates a breathing entity.
January 9, 2016
Picked this up in a bargain bookshop as it had a good review by a dj/producer I love. A kind of love letter to London Town. It was alright.....narrator was a bit of a bore
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews