William Leith

Q: What IS a "Northern Line Minute"? A: When you're standing on the platform and the screen says that the next train will arrive in one minute, it invariably takes longer. The author uses this phrase throughout the book to refer to something that you expect to take a minute but in reality takes longer. Or something that takes longer than it should. This is a phrase that I think I might find useful.

William Leith, or the narrator of this book named William Leith, is a trembling mass of show more anxiety. When it comes to transportation, he's afraid of all forms of it, but in particular he's afraid of the London Underground. As you can imagine, this makes life cumbersome for someone who lives in London. In the opening we see the narrator tackling his fear and taking the Tube. As the doors of the carriage close, he smells smoke and launches himself into a stream of consciousness anxious monologue just to get himself through this journey. On the way from Belsize Park to Camden Town (that's two stops if you're not familiar with the Northern Line), he goes off on all sorts of tangents in an effort to distract himself. But he keeps coming back to the burning smell. Is it all in his head?

This 73 page book, which is pretty much one long paragraph, was fairly humorous and for the most part, interesting. Although it won't make my Top Five List for the year, I know that it will stay with me, and that the next time I'm in London and inevitably on the Northern Line, I will remember this book in detail.

Recommended for: it's very short and not much of a reading commitment. If you think it sounds like it might have potential, give it a try.

Cover comments: This sat on my counter yesterday and my daughter and husband separately both picked it up and said, "What an ugly cover!". I actually think the blurred picture of the roundel (that's the official name of that red and blue circle, btw) effectively expresses the author's existential angst. show less

Like many people who live in London I prefer not to use the Underground, though sometimes it is unavoidable. When i do have to resort to travelling by Tube it is normally the northern Line that I find myself on, so I was particularly interested to see what William Leith had to say about it.

Leith makes it clear from the start of this short book (another in the Penguin series about the various London Underground Lines) that he is a nervous underground passenger , and it emerges that he had show more actually gone several years without travelling on the Tube. For the journey that he describes ion this book he forces himself to board the train, unsure whether he can smell something burning or whether he is imagining it. As the journey continues he becomes more convinced that there is something wrong. His anxiety isn't assuaged by the fleeting memories that come, uninvited, into his mind, all of them recounting a traumatic episode from his earlier life that was associated, to a greater or lesser degree, with a station on the Northern Line. He captures the sense of paranoia that every Norther Line habitue occasionally feels, and I certainly recognised a lot of his neuroses - I almost wish I hadn't read this.! show less

This book started off well and then progressively deteriorated. It would seem that Leith forgot what the point of the book was about halfway through. His ramblings about the Atkins diet and the media were unbelievably annoying (mainly because of their length). I started to feel like he ran out of things to write about, so he decided to go off on various tangents ... crack addiction, cell phones, smoking, alcoholism ... "Gotta make it to 300 pages ... hmmm ... let me throw in a useless show more description of plastic surgery ... that will do the trick!" Ugh. Give me a break. It seems to me that, instead of using his own creativity, Leith attempted to follow the footsteps of Frey. Sadly, it was not an effective strategy. He has the potential to write an amazing book ... he just needs some guidance. show less

I loved this book ! I enjoyed his writing so much that I went out and bought his two other books.

I can understand how this would not be a 5 star book to some, but to me it was as it is was so relatable to my own life and horror stories of having binge eating disorder for 33 years, self loathing, clothes that fit one week but not the next, the shame, the self-disgust, the endless attempts and failures of trying to lose weight but getting nowhere fast for decades.

This is a warts and all book, show more it is not prettified so as not to disgust others. It is a book written by a drug taken, alcoholic, binge eating man in England.

I enjoyed it and nearly every page I found myself smiling saying, ' yep, been there done that William, it is not only you '.

A show less