What do you think?
Rate this book
London Incognita
London Incognita chronicles a city caught in the cycle of perpetual decline and continuous renewal: the English capital, groaning under the weight of two-thousand years of history, as seen through the eyes of its desperate and troubled inhabitants. A malicious presence from the 1970s resurfaces in the fevered alleyways of the city; an amnesiac goddess offers brittle comfort to the spirits of murdered shop-girls; and an obscure and forgotten London writer holds the key to a thing known as the emperor worm. As bombs detonate and buildings burn down, the city's selfish inhabitants hunt the ghosts of friends, family and lovers to the urban limits of the metropolis, uncovering the dark secrets of London.
Includes the Shirley Jackson Award shortlisted Judderman.
Includes the Shirley Jackson Award shortlisted Judderman.
322 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 2020
4 people are currently reading
427 people want to read
About the author
Gary Budden
29 books81 followersGary Budden writes fiction and creative non-fiction about the intersections of British sub-culture, landscape, psychogeography, hidden history, nature, horror, weird fiction and more.
His collection of uncanny psychogeographies and landscape punk, HOLLOW SHORES, was published by Dead Ink Books in October 2017. His dark fiction novella JUDDERMAN (as D.A. Northwood) is published in 2018 by the Eden Book Society.
He was shortlisted for the 2015 London Short Story Award, and his story ‘Greenteeth’ was nominated for a 2017 British Fantasy Award and adapted into a short film by the filmmaker Adam Scovell.
His work has been published widely, including Black Static, Structo, Elsewhere, Unthology, The Lonely Crowd, Gorse, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction.
Praise for HOLLOW SHORES:
Here are punks, ghosts, vampire-hunters, ancient gods that hate to be neglected. Here is a country and a world teetering on the lip of apocalyptic void. And here are, too, insanities, desperate longings, great loves and rages and beauties. Completely absorbing.
— Niall Griffiths, author of Runt
I don't think I've ever read a collection of stories that fitted together so well before, with each one deepening the same themes to make a powerful reading experience about loss, and belonging, and growing.
– Aliya Whiteley, author of The Beauty
Quiet, unsettling, and at times, quite beautiful... The overall sense of dissatisfaction (though never angsty) and longing for an ineffable, unattainable ideal in our environmentally ravaged world was authentically and meticulously rendered.
– Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts
Budden’s writing is sparse, terse even, but perfectly suited to the landscapes of dislocation and alienation that are his natural milieu.
– Nina Allan, author of The Rift
Like some mythic counterculture coast; The Snow Goose on speed.
– Tony White, author of The Fountain in the Forest
His collection of uncanny psychogeographies and landscape punk, HOLLOW SHORES, was published by Dead Ink Books in October 2017. His dark fiction novella JUDDERMAN (as D.A. Northwood) is published in 2018 by the Eden Book Society.
He was shortlisted for the 2015 London Short Story Award, and his story ‘Greenteeth’ was nominated for a 2017 British Fantasy Award and adapted into a short film by the filmmaker Adam Scovell.
His work has been published widely, including Black Static, Structo, Elsewhere, Unthology, The Lonely Crowd, Gorse, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction.
Praise for HOLLOW SHORES:
Here are punks, ghosts, vampire-hunters, ancient gods that hate to be neglected. Here is a country and a world teetering on the lip of apocalyptic void. And here are, too, insanities, desperate longings, great loves and rages and beauties. Completely absorbing.
— Niall Griffiths, author of Runt
I don't think I've ever read a collection of stories that fitted together so well before, with each one deepening the same themes to make a powerful reading experience about loss, and belonging, and growing.
– Aliya Whiteley, author of The Beauty
Quiet, unsettling, and at times, quite beautiful... The overall sense of dissatisfaction (though never angsty) and longing for an ineffable, unattainable ideal in our environmentally ravaged world was authentically and meticulously rendered.
– Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts
Budden’s writing is sparse, terse even, but perfectly suited to the landscapes of dislocation and alienation that are his natural milieu.
– Nina Allan, author of The Rift
Like some mythic counterculture coast; The Snow Goose on speed.
– Tony White, author of The Fountain in the Forest
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
November 1, 2020
I reviewed this for Sublime Horror. Read the full review here: London Incognita by Gary Budden review – a modern masterpiece of the urban wyrd
I love books like this: collections of short stories with subtle links between them, the kind of connections that reveal themselves incrementally as you read. I don’t mean a novel-in-stories, exactly (although I like those too); I mean books that slowly and scrupulously build an increasingly rich world, one you can get to know in bits and pieces but only understand in full when you reach the end. London Incognita is a book, a place, and a mythology. It’s the weird little interstitial spaces you only know about if you’ve lived in a city for years and exhausted all its lesser-explored corners. It’s the shabby shopping centres, council blocks and underpasses you’ll only encounter if you’re poor or down on your luck. It’s a shifting shadow that makes you jump, or a familiar face glimpsed in a crowd for a split second. It’s a marvellous interconnected web of individual histories. And whenever I came across a name or a phrase in one story that I recognised from another, I felt like it was whispering a secret to me.
The book opens with a prologue, ‘Sinker’, which, as its subtitle tells us, is ‘a dark cadence’, setting the tone for the slippery rhythms of the rest. Then there’s ‘Judderman’, which was originally published as an Eden Book Society novella – and a really fucking good one, too; easily my favourite of what has, so far, been a consistently excellent series. It’s brilliant in itself, but takes on new life here, contextualised by more tales of the distorted mirror-city that lurks behind the facade of London. Especially ‘We Pass Under’, which introduces another restless spirit of London Incognita – the Commare – and the closing novella ‘You’re Already Dead’, which acts as a sort of feminine inversion of the corrupted masculinity of ‘Judderman’, and transforms its bleak tale of loss into one of nascent hope.
My favourite new story in London Incognita was ‘Sky City’, in which a pitiless bailiff glimpses not a dark and seething underbelly, but his idealised vision of a cleansed, gleaming London – only to have it ultimately draw him to his fate. But really, every story feels like it’s essential to the bigger picture. I keep catching myself thinking about the Londons that exist in this book, and I know they’re going to stay with me. It’s a thrilling fusion of horror and psychogeography with punk, pulp and zine culture – a style that really is all Budden’s own, and realised to its full extent here.
I received an advance review copy of London Incognita from the publisher, Dead Ink.
TinyLetter | Linktree
I love books like this: collections of short stories with subtle links between them, the kind of connections that reveal themselves incrementally as you read. I don’t mean a novel-in-stories, exactly (although I like those too); I mean books that slowly and scrupulously build an increasingly rich world, one you can get to know in bits and pieces but only understand in full when you reach the end. London Incognita is a book, a place, and a mythology. It’s the weird little interstitial spaces you only know about if you’ve lived in a city for years and exhausted all its lesser-explored corners. It’s the shabby shopping centres, council blocks and underpasses you’ll only encounter if you’re poor or down on your luck. It’s a shifting shadow that makes you jump, or a familiar face glimpsed in a crowd for a split second. It’s a marvellous interconnected web of individual histories. And whenever I came across a name or a phrase in one story that I recognised from another, I felt like it was whispering a secret to me.
The book opens with a prologue, ‘Sinker’, which, as its subtitle tells us, is ‘a dark cadence’, setting the tone for the slippery rhythms of the rest. Then there’s ‘Judderman’, which was originally published as an Eden Book Society novella – and a really fucking good one, too; easily my favourite of what has, so far, been a consistently excellent series. It’s brilliant in itself, but takes on new life here, contextualised by more tales of the distorted mirror-city that lurks behind the facade of London. Especially ‘We Pass Under’, which introduces another restless spirit of London Incognita – the Commare – and the closing novella ‘You’re Already Dead’, which acts as a sort of feminine inversion of the corrupted masculinity of ‘Judderman’, and transforms its bleak tale of loss into one of nascent hope.
My favourite new story in London Incognita was ‘Sky City’, in which a pitiless bailiff glimpses not a dark and seething underbelly, but his idealised vision of a cleansed, gleaming London – only to have it ultimately draw him to his fate. But really, every story feels like it’s essential to the bigger picture. I keep catching myself thinking about the Londons that exist in this book, and I know they’re going to stay with me. It’s a thrilling fusion of horror and psychogeography with punk, pulp and zine culture – a style that really is all Budden’s own, and realised to its full extent here.
I received an advance review copy of London Incognita from the publisher, Dead Ink.
TinyLetter | Linktree
December 9, 2021
There are a lot of people living in the capital, at the last count 8 million; it is dynamic, restless and constantly changing. However, not everything is gloss and glamour. Parts of the capital don’t even feel safe any time of the day, the seedier areas can creep out the bravest souls and things that have been thought long dead, still can be found if you know where to look.
Walking was the only way to map the streets of London Incognita
Danny has been searching for the stories of London Incognita, collecting them, writing them down in a cheap journal and hoping that what he gleans will help him define his own identity. But one of those presences is aware of what he is doing, the Judderman. The first Gary, Danny’s brother knows about all of this is when Danny disappears and as he walks the streets looking for him, he realises that it is something that he may not be able to escape from either
I was no longer an outsider; instead I was part of a club I never wished to be a member of.
Some of the stories feel dreamlike, so take us into the sewers, disused railway arches a spriggan leering face is visible among the graffiti. The mudlarks hold some of the keys to the darker snapshots of London’s history and finding the flickering woman may offer a route to the place where no shadows fall…
I went into this completely blind, I hadn’t even read the blurb before. It took me a short while to realise that these are a collection of short stories that have common links, characters and themes. The thing that ties that all together into a cohesive, slightly chilling whole. It is like Neverwhere taken up another notch before they get to London below. Budden has got the balance about right, there is enough detail about the grimmer darker, seedier parts of the capital without it becoming too much and the folk horror elements reveal enough to let my imagination run wild. My favourites were Sky City and My Queen, but they were all very good indeed.
Walking was the only way to map the streets of London Incognita
Danny has been searching for the stories of London Incognita, collecting them, writing them down in a cheap journal and hoping that what he gleans will help him define his own identity. But one of those presences is aware of what he is doing, the Judderman. The first Gary, Danny’s brother knows about all of this is when Danny disappears and as he walks the streets looking for him, he realises that it is something that he may not be able to escape from either
I was no longer an outsider; instead I was part of a club I never wished to be a member of.
Some of the stories feel dreamlike, so take us into the sewers, disused railway arches a spriggan leering face is visible among the graffiti. The mudlarks hold some of the keys to the darker snapshots of London’s history and finding the flickering woman may offer a route to the place where no shadows fall…
I went into this completely blind, I hadn’t even read the blurb before. It took me a short while to realise that these are a collection of short stories that have common links, characters and themes. The thing that ties that all together into a cohesive, slightly chilling whole. It is like Neverwhere taken up another notch before they get to London below. Budden has got the balance about right, there is enough detail about the grimmer darker, seedier parts of the capital without it becoming too much and the folk horror elements reveal enough to let my imagination run wild. My favourites were Sky City and My Queen, but they were all very good indeed.
October 27, 2020
As the title suggests, Budden turns his attention to London for this, his second collection. Personal highlights included the Shirley Jackson Awards nominated novella Judderman and the stories What Never Was and I Precede Myself, but if you enjoy weird literary fiction there's plenty to savour here. A fascinating attempt to create his own mythology of Emperor worms, rat queens and the ever-present commare.
December 1, 2020
I stumbled upon the late D.A. Northwood’s striking Judderman a couple of years ago when the novella was originally published by the Eden Book Society. Although it was not exactly a secret, Gary Budden was later ‘outed’ as the author around the time the piece was deservedly nominated for a prestigious Shirley Jackson Award. Northwood may well have died fictionally in 1982, but Budden is going strong and when not writing, is involved with indie press Influx. Although London Incognita will not be to all tastes, it remains a hallucinogenic (often bad) trip into the underside and lesser-known areas of London and you certainly will not find the tourist hotspots such as Buckingham Palace or Madame Tussauds. Alternatively, it is more interested in dilapidated buildings, decay, and the changing urban landscape, a style which has been called ‘Landscape Punk’, a subject Gary Budden has written about in the past.
You can read Tony's full review at Horror DNA by clicking here.
You can read Tony's full review at Horror DNA by clicking here.
November 5, 2020
Buddens honest and fearless prose is a love song to Englands capital, I would compare it to the likes of Irvine Welsh and James Kelman however I haven't quite read anything like it before. This book is drear with some bittersweet tones as we explore the busy streets of London and the abundance of characters it holds. I'm at a loss of words and in awe of this book.
November 25, 2020
The line dividing a collection of short stories and a novel has become more blurred than ever over recent years. When I started reading London Incognita I was under the impression that I was reading the former but the further I progressed the more it became clear that it was the latter. I think there's an argument, too, that it might even be some sort of third option. Many of the pieces/chapters/stories absolutely work as stand alones but the effect of the whole is certainly greater.
There is another London. It's under the surface of the one (we think) we know. It's at the edges and peripheral. It's ephemeral but also permanent. There is danger in it but also comfort. The Eider brothers are obsessed with this London Incognita and begin to join the dots and we gradually see more dots and more connections as book goes on. The Eider family reappears from time to time, mysteries unfold and some explanations are offered whilst others remain cloaked and out of reach.
London Incognita is literary, fantastical, psychogeographic, horrific, punk and above all, to anyone who has spent time in London, it's familiar and real.
I haven't been to all of the places mentioned in the book but I know enough of them to feel a real connection to it. I came to it at the perfect time as lockdown has meant that I have walked much more of my part of East London than ever before and places that were only names to me before this year were leaping off the page in an entirely more vivid way as a result.
I think this book is extraordinary.
There is another London. It's under the surface of the one (we think) we know. It's at the edges and peripheral. It's ephemeral but also permanent. There is danger in it but also comfort. The Eider brothers are obsessed with this London Incognita and begin to join the dots and we gradually see more dots and more connections as book goes on. The Eider family reappears from time to time, mysteries unfold and some explanations are offered whilst others remain cloaked and out of reach.
London Incognita is literary, fantastical, psychogeographic, horrific, punk and above all, to anyone who has spent time in London, it's familiar and real.
I haven't been to all of the places mentioned in the book but I know enough of them to feel a real connection to it. I came to it at the perfect time as lockdown has meant that I have walked much more of my part of East London than ever before and places that were only names to me before this year were leaping off the page in an entirely more vivid way as a result.
I think this book is extraordinary.
October 2, 2020
Gritty and Poetic!
This is a collection of stories all linked by the darker side of London that is always there but rarely seen, London Incognita!
Now short story collections are not something I normally read but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. What I really appreciated was how these stories were connected, some more subtly than others. It may just be a passing mention of a character or location or some of the same characters in a different time or place.
Many of the characters in this book could be classed as misfits and outcasts. From urban explorers to punks and junkies, this book has them all! And isn’t that what London is all about? The mixing of different people!
A truly unique book that I highly recommend! If you want to experience London in an unfamiliar way then pick this up!
This is a collection of stories all linked by the darker side of London that is always there but rarely seen, London Incognita!
Now short story collections are not something I normally read but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. What I really appreciated was how these stories were connected, some more subtly than others. It may just be a passing mention of a character or location or some of the same characters in a different time or place.
Many of the characters in this book could be classed as misfits and outcasts. From urban explorers to punks and junkies, this book has them all! And isn’t that what London is all about? The mixing of different people!
A truly unique book that I highly recommend! If you want to experience London in an unfamiliar way then pick this up!
July 6, 2024
i would like to give this book 10*s i thought it was
INCREDIBLE!! haven't read anything that's blown my mind like this in ages because it actually felt like i should be using the prose, the form, the way this book explored subjects and the subjects in question, i should or could be using all that like a textbook for how my own writing could grow up and look like. i was so INSPIRED by this book it only made me have IDEAS but also gave me an understanding of where those ideas could or should go and how they function under the hood and make a fucking substack
INCREDIBLE!! haven't read anything that's blown my mind like this in ages because it actually felt like i should be using the prose, the form, the way this book explored subjects and the subjects in question, i should or could be using all that like a textbook for how my own writing could grow up and look like. i was so INSPIRED by this book it only made me have IDEAS but also gave me an understanding of where those ideas could or should go and how they function under the hood and make a fucking substack
May 25, 2021
A dark, compelling read. This polyphonic narrative pulls the reader down the sprial of London's streets and myths and into the darkness and strangeness that dwell there. The various voices compress together like the layers of London's history. This ghost of the city and its citizens are both haunted and haunting. This is a book best read at night and one to which I will be returning to further explore and examine these shadow narratives.
June 3, 2021
A series of interconnected short stories that starts as one thing and ends as something quite different. Tapping into a similar vein as China Mieville’s Un Lun Dun and sharing the same paths as Gareth E Rees’s Marshland, London Incognita channels the darkness and precarity of the less-known parts of the capital.
If you’re a runner who has lived in North London, there’s a certain bonus pleasure to recognising spots around the Lea Valley, Finsbury Park and Crouch End.
If you’re a runner who has lived in North London, there’s a certain bonus pleasure to recognising spots around the Lea Valley, Finsbury Park and Crouch End.
May 3, 2024
Outlaw Bookseller, who recommended this book, classified it as “weird” fiction. Not science fiction, not horror, but not exactly mainstream fiction either. Reminded me a bit of Gaiman or Mieville with respects to a secret city. A good read.
January 2, 2022
Well this was just....... everything! Bizarre, entertaining, curious, horrifying, poetic, gritty.
Gary Budden has put together a loose set of stories by seemingly unconnected but actually intertwined characters, and through them explores a reverie of the London unseen; the gritty, grotty, smelly, dodgy underbelly of London where the tourists avoid.
The writing here is inspired and intelligent, elaborately weaving plots and sub-plots of juddermen, rat queens, murdered souls and miscreants. Through exploring the dark clandestine side of London, Budden actually presents to us his ode to the city.
Very well written and cleverly executed. I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
Gary Budden has put together a loose set of stories by seemingly unconnected but actually intertwined characters, and through them explores a reverie of the London unseen; the gritty, grotty, smelly, dodgy underbelly of London where the tourists avoid.
The writing here is inspired and intelligent, elaborately weaving plots and sub-plots of juddermen, rat queens, murdered souls and miscreants. Through exploring the dark clandestine side of London, Budden actually presents to us his ode to the city.
Very well written and cleverly executed. I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
December 9, 2022
The dark London I glimpse, strange and dreaming, out of the corner of my eye
December 30, 2025
Easily the best book I've read in 2025 and Gary Budden is for me one of the best authors working today. If you are an avid reader and are fed up with the usual mass produced drivel with which we see spewed out on a weekly basis then look no further than this tour de force (London Incognita). It's not an easy book to categorize and therefore that is what makes it original, profound and chock full of fresh new ideas which blend beautifully from one story to another as you read through. Originally I presumed the book was a collection of short stories and whilst it is in one sense, it isn't in another. Each story represents an underlying darkness of London seen through the eyes of two brothers, Daniel and Gary Eider. Eventually Daniel goes missing and Gary is left to go it alone within a version of London from his perspective, being (London Incognita) where underpasses, dank streets and everything in between is described by Budden in grim and visceral detail. Gary is flawless in putting you where he wants you to be and perhaps where you'd rather not be. A foreboding mythological presence lurks in the shadows of London's incognita known in underground circles as the (Judderman) that for me is a metaphor for addiction and the dark lonely road it presents. What I especially loved about this book is how Budden slowly introduces new faces to the bleak version of London he has bestowed upon us with each new entry. Not only that, but how the missing brother narrative is always looming in the background of each separate story and is briefly mentioned without laying all emphasis on the disappearance. Each story is cleverly intertwined and each set of characters are linked throughout generations that gel perfectly together in an innovative way that has been flawlessly crafted by this talented author. Gary also captured the unsettling nature of liminal spaces and a pervading loneliness with which a cruel unforgiving urban environment can bring along. I'm telling you, if you want an existential masterpiece of what it means to be human and what it means to inhabit a city caught in the cycle of perpetual decline and continuous renewal then you seriously owe it to yourself to pick up this under appreciated gem. I can't praise Gary Budden enough here and have ordered his previous collection of short stories (Hollow Shores) which I'm sure and almost certain will deliver as did (London Incognita) beyond expectation. All of the interconnecting stories are exceptional but I'll leave a list of my standouts below but again the whole book is solid from start to finish.
Judderman- Set in 1972, The longest of the book and focuses solely on the brothers Daniel and Gary Eider leading to Daniel's sudden disappearance. Nominated for the Shirley Jackson award and is beyond me why it didn't win.
We Pass Under- A former John Lewis make-up counter sales person passes underneath an underpass and is overcome with memories of times past amid her current situation within the grey and gloom of a wet and rainy world that rumbles on the road above her. A perfect example of how talented an author and visionary Gary is in turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. Excellent stuff.
Sky City- A bailiff takes great pride in cleaning up the filth that is debt ridden debtors and enters a flat where the debtor hasn't paid for three years. The entry changes his life and forces him to reevaluate his life decisions. Really hard hitting stuff that pulls no punches. Superb.
Staples Corner, and How we Can Know it- The story uses a mundane trip to a Currys/PC World store to explore the "inhuman architecture" and the overwhelming reality of the location and feeling it evokes. You ever wonder why you feel the way you do sometimes upon stepping into a building or place, then this is that story which will speak volumes to you.
Again I want to make clear that these entries are ones which burnt into my deepest recesses, every interconnecting story is a five so find this book, order it and read anything and everything Budden puts out, trust me you'll not regret it.
Judderman- Set in 1972, The longest of the book and focuses solely on the brothers Daniel and Gary Eider leading to Daniel's sudden disappearance. Nominated for the Shirley Jackson award and is beyond me why it didn't win.
We Pass Under- A former John Lewis make-up counter sales person passes underneath an underpass and is overcome with memories of times past amid her current situation within the grey and gloom of a wet and rainy world that rumbles on the road above her. A perfect example of how talented an author and visionary Gary is in turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. Excellent stuff.
Sky City- A bailiff takes great pride in cleaning up the filth that is debt ridden debtors and enters a flat where the debtor hasn't paid for three years. The entry changes his life and forces him to reevaluate his life decisions. Really hard hitting stuff that pulls no punches. Superb.
Staples Corner, and How we Can Know it- The story uses a mundane trip to a Currys/PC World store to explore the "inhuman architecture" and the overwhelming reality of the location and feeling it evokes. You ever wonder why you feel the way you do sometimes upon stepping into a building or place, then this is that story which will speak volumes to you.
Again I want to make clear that these entries are ones which burnt into my deepest recesses, every interconnecting story is a five so find this book, order it and read anything and everything Budden puts out, trust me you'll not regret it.
November 27, 2022
This is worth the price of admission if you like psychogeography/urbex writing but by the end I definitely felt the author had run out of things to say. I have a nasty feeling that if you deleted a few chapters in the middle you wouldn't miss much and I can see how this is cobbled together from obscure short story anthologies and online magazines. I just hope the next book isn't another seven yards of the same stuff. The basic problem, I think, is that all the characters in the mixture of overlapping short stories and fragments are pretty much the same character (possibly the author). S/he is fascinated by London Incognita, slightly outsiderish and so on. The other problem is that the Incognita stuff is getting not just Cognita but ubiquitous in this sort of writing: Spring Heeled Jack, abandoned tube stations, rat kings, yada yada. It's pretty ironic that a genre that is supposed to be about exploration and the unusual fishes so hard from the same shallow pool. Maybe these authors should read each other's stuff less and go hunting more. This side of it feels a bit like "genre" in that the author can't write what they want but the kind of titillation the intended reader expects ("romance" in Mills and Boon for example.) I guess I must have the genre bug a bit here because I enjoyed this most of the way through. But I'm tempted to say go back to the source and read Diary of the Plague Year or The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
September 1, 2021
Starting with that annoying note of 'London Incognita' a bolero of short stories that will touch the nostalgia strings of anyone having the pleasure of walking home to a 4-5th zone flat in a drunken haze after drinks somewhere in a Clerkenwell pub. Or actually it might not, as who cares for a 70s geezer, or observations of a snobbish narrator(s) whose south London and suburbia knowledge doesn't stretch far enough to cover experiences of those who inhabit these places? 😉
IMHO it's collection of caricaturés, and if admired as such works quite well (especially if you focus on certain strokes that reoccurre in-between these). Read as 'eye-opener', 'introduction to the dirty underbelly of the city' it might just annoy and/or disappoint a reader who happens to be tuned-in to London and have enough sensitivity to process its complex nature, letting themselves to sink into flowing crowd, slow down and take coffee in a random community run cafe on some dying high-street etc. You get the vibe I guess go and read King Rat instead 😜
IMHO it's collection of caricaturés, and if admired as such works quite well (especially if you focus on certain strokes that reoccurre in-between these). Read as 'eye-opener', 'introduction to the dirty underbelly of the city' it might just annoy and/or disappoint a reader who happens to be tuned-in to London and have enough sensitivity to process its complex nature, letting themselves to sink into flowing crowd, slow down and take coffee in a random community run cafe on some dying high-street etc. You get the vibe I guess go and read King Rat instead 😜
March 11, 2024
i would like to give this book 10*s i thought it was INCREDIBLE!! haven’t read anything that’s blown my mind like this in ages bc it actually felt like i should be using the prose, the form, the way this book explored subjects n the subjects in question, i should or could be using all that like a textbook for my own writing. i was so Inspired™️ (not in a cheesy way) by this book. it made me have ideas and understanding of where those ideas could or should go, how they function under the hood. this might not be up everyone’s street bur, for me, it IS the fucking street. gary budden, i love you!!!
December 3, 2025
Absolutely love when the last chapter of a book just completely recontexualises my relationship with everything that came before and this does this in such a wonderful way. As someone from the areas being talked about in this book it felt so personal and reverberated within me and I really love it
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews