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Shark
Shark is a story about the dispossess and how they get by.
Ex-soldier and violent deadbeat John Usher returns to his boyhood home of Leeds to find things have changed. His community has been unravelled by gang culture, ethnic tensions and hopelessness.
Unable to sleep, his only consolation is drinking late into the night and playing pool by himself. That is, until an encounter with a hard right activist leads him into a twisted relationship of deceit, cuckoldry and hatred.
"In Shark, Wes Brown writes with a kind of rhythmic Northern realism, catching the way we think, the way we talk, the way we act round here; he manages to make the North a marvellous place, a place where art can happen, where epic can feel comfortable..." Ian McMillan, poet and broadcaster.
"Brown is a new generation Updike with the ability to capture the essence of a time and place comparable to Cartwright's Heartland. Never has hard-fought alienation been rendered so tensely familiar and jaw-achingly hard to swallow." Jo Brandon, editor of The Cadaverine
"Here we have that rare artifact. A contemporary, regional, working class novel written with the ideas-based, language currency of the great transatlantic Updike, Bellow, DeLillo and Martin Amis. Wes Brown's art is to match literary intensity to the northern pubs and pool halls, finding the story in a young man's struggle to accommodate himself to the life he has been dealt, after service in Iraq, in a community divided and adfrift." Danny Broderick, The Workroom.
Ex-soldier and violent deadbeat John Usher returns to his boyhood home of Leeds to find things have changed. His community has been unravelled by gang culture, ethnic tensions and hopelessness.
Unable to sleep, his only consolation is drinking late into the night and playing pool by himself. That is, until an encounter with a hard right activist leads him into a twisted relationship of deceit, cuckoldry and hatred.
"In Shark, Wes Brown writes with a kind of rhythmic Northern realism, catching the way we think, the way we talk, the way we act round here; he manages to make the North a marvellous place, a place where art can happen, where epic can feel comfortable..." Ian McMillan, poet and broadcaster.
"Brown is a new generation Updike with the ability to capture the essence of a time and place comparable to Cartwright's Heartland. Never has hard-fought alienation been rendered so tensely familiar and jaw-achingly hard to swallow." Jo Brandon, editor of The Cadaverine
"Here we have that rare artifact. A contemporary, regional, working class novel written with the ideas-based, language currency of the great transatlantic Updike, Bellow, DeLillo and Martin Amis. Wes Brown's art is to match literary intensity to the northern pubs and pool halls, finding the story in a young man's struggle to accommodate himself to the life he has been dealt, after service in Iraq, in a community divided and adfrift." Danny Broderick, The Workroom.
198 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 27, 2009
7 people want to read
About the author
Wes Brown
18 books5 followersWes was born in Leeds in 1985. He started writing when he was sixteen and joined The Writing Squad soon after. He enjoyed editorial placements at Penguin and Route before founding Cadaverine Magazine and continuing to publish and perform his work widely. He is currently the Young Writers' Hub Coordinator and Information Manager for the National Association for Literature Development. He is Director of Dead Ink Publications and his debut novel, Shark, was published by Dog Horn in 2010.
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