Idiot

by Chris Fenner, Oscar Fenner (Illustrator)

Billy, a diffident stray and amateur drummer, meets Liz, who persuades him to move into a squat with her and start a band.Liz is soon side-tracked into music journalism and the lure of pop stardom in America, leaving Billy to a bittersweet, close-to-desperation existence in a wasteland of ex-council squats and seedy pubs. Wandering through a series of misadventures, he encounters various would-be musicians, gay entertainers, chronic drunks, borderline psychotics and dysfunctional hospital porters.The milieu is mid-eighties South London, the forsaken docklands of Rotherhithe, populated by scruffy, resourceful folk living hand to mouth in the flipside to yuppie-dom.

126 pages, Paperback

Published March 29, 2020

Reviews

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

As dark, damp and drunk London and it's occupants are portrayed herein, Fenner's snappy dialogue reveals a thoroughly readable picaresque that had me audibly giggling and moaning in turn. Oh no, not another evening spent cadging drinks and charming the clientele, not another ill-advised liaison, not another abandoned attempt to find redeeming employment. Oh, yes, indeed, our anti-hero is fated to repeat himself a la Groundhog Day written by Bukowski, but in this go-round one is thoroughly rapt in the fine writing and brutally familiar journey. I read this as slowly as possible to savor the all-too-brief experience.