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1974 by David Peace
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1974 (original 1999; edition 2005)

by David Peace

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9823121,077 (3.58)97
Jeanette Garland, missing Castleford, July 1969. Susan Ridyard, missing Rochdale, March 1972. Clare Kemplay, missing Morley, since yesterday. Christmas bombs and Lucky on the run, Leeds United and the Bay City Rollers, The Exorcist and It Ain't Half Hot Mum. It's winter, 1974, Yorkshire, and Ed Dunford's got the job he wanted. Crime correspondent for the Evening Post. He didn't know it was going to be a season in hell. A dead little girl with a swan's wings stitched to her back. A gypsy camp in a ring of fire. Corruption everywhere you look. In Nineteen Seventy Four , David Peace brings the passion and stylistic bravado of a James Ellroy novel to this terrifyingly intense journey into a secret history of sexual obsession, greed and sadism - the finest British crime debut since Derek Raymond's He Died With His Eyes Open.… (more)
Member:ILebeter
Title:1974
Authors:David Peace
Info:Liebeskind Verlagsbhdlg. (2005), Hardcover, 383 pages
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Nineteen Seventy Four by David Peace (1999)

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» See also 97 mentions

English (27)  Spanish (2)  Swedish (1)  German (1)  All languages (31)
Showing 1-5 of 27 (next | show all)
What a disgusting, contemptible, morally repulsive book.

The main character is a garbage human being. He moons over pictures of perfect little school girls a bit too much. His opinions of grown women are disgusting and weak. He ditches his girlfriend when he impregnates her. She's forced to have an abortion without support from him. It's barely believable that he has any sort of relationship with any woman. He uses the word “fuck” until it becomes little more than an irritant rather than a word of emphasis. I found myself wishing for his demise, so he could just die already and be over with the thing.

Ed is an unreliable narrator in a profession that relies on reliability. Told from his POV, the narrative can go from snooze-worthy tedium to WTF! in less than a paragraph. This is a person who needs psychiatric meds. Now.

The horror of the book is that all the characters are drowning in shit and piss. They revel in the basest of needs and wants. They are corrupt and self-serving to the point of absurdity. And their helpless victims are butchered because of it.

Let's not say that it is a product of an era. Not on the day after the LISK was finally arrested. Because women and girls are still dying while law enforcement diddles with egos out, treat women with contempt, and upper-class people pearl-clutch about names without actually doing anything for women in danger. Nothing ever changes. Not really.

I did not love the experience of this book, but that doesn't mean that the book is bad.

However, it's an unpleasant book that I wouldn't recommend to anyone. ( )
  rabbit-stew | Dec 31, 2023 |
Quite the perfect Christmas read, Peace’s filthy goddamn Yorkshire horror story is fucking fantastic. It’s a real accomplishment when you can return from the adapted material, Channel 4’s excellent three-part series of TV films, to the source material and get a serious kick out of it without going ‘Oh I know where this is all going, so what’s the bloody point?’

Peace’s prose is crystal clear, grimy, yet absolutely ideal for the yarn he spins here - a journalistic style primed to adequately elucidate the plight of his protagonist. You crack open a page of Nineteen Seventeen Four and bile practically seeps out of the page, coagulated blood makes the book so sickly and sticky you can barely pry the thing open. It’s pitch perfect nausea, absolutely unrelenting. I mean this thing is pegged as Yorkshire noir, but calling it noir isn’t a sufficient enough term for the blackness found here.

Nineteen Seventeen Four swings like a pendulum between God and his angels and the abject horror of a dead young girl’s leering smile as it emerges from black and white school photos, and the momentum of this thematic swing, this contradiction between the graceful and omnibenevolent movement of a swan to the utterly pitch black corruption of all and sundry creates a giddy sickness and delirium within the (un)fortunate reader. Dreams bubble forth into the narrative, collapsing frameworks of reference, an endless vista of grey nothingness illuminating the entire tragedy.

Mark Fisher’s characterisation of the novels (I’m only at the first so fingers crossed Peace’s own writerly momentum carries through, both thematically and when it comes to being bloody interesting) as Manichaean/Gnostic is spot on. His chapter dedicated to it in Ghosts of my Life is certainly worth a flick through for those interested.

But yeah, fan-fucking-tastic. I devoured this sucker (like our good ol’ character BJ) and will quickly get through the rest. As I bothered doing a review I’ll give the same old music recs to play alongside, even though the book has a sickly discography of its own consisting of Elton John and Bryan Ferry and all that lot if you’re a die hard when it comes to getting the actual diegetic atmosphere.

- Penderecki, Sacred Choral Works
- Branca, World Turned Upside Down
- Branca, Symphony No.5
- Porter Ricks, Porter Ricks
- Akira Rabelais, Spellewauerynsherde ( )
  theoaustin | Dec 26, 2023 |
Having recently re-watched the TV adaptations I decided to re-read the books and I'd forgotten how much was different in this one. The merging of John Dawson with another character and not even meeting Dawson (so to speak) until the very end, the different locations and added layers to the corruption. Makes me wonder what else I've forgotten from the others. ( )
  ElegantMechanic | May 28, 2022 |
Long time since I have seen such crap. Joining my short list of unreadable books. ( )
  jmhdassen | Oct 28, 2021 |
I read this on recommendation and it's really not my sort of thing at all. Child murders, violence and corruption, and no-one with any empathy or even a shred of human decency. Short, choppy sentences and expletives throughout to make it seem dynamic and gritty but no characterization or coherent plot. I kept reading to the end in the hope that there would be some reasonable conclusion but there was just more torture. Needless to say I won't be picking up the rest of this series. ( )
  SChant | Jan 15, 2018 |
Showing 1-5 of 27 (next | show all)
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» Add other authors (11 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
David Peaceprimary authorall editionscalculated
Reichlin, SaulNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Epigraph
'The only thing new in this world is the history you don't know.'
--Harry S. Truman
Dedication
For Izumi
In memory of Michael and Eiki
With thanks to my family and friends, home and away
First words
'All we ever get is Lord fucking Lucan and wingless bloody crows,' smiled Gilman, like this was the best day of our lives:
Friday 13th December 1974.
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Wikipedia in English (1)

Jeanette Garland, missing Castleford, July 1969. Susan Ridyard, missing Rochdale, March 1972. Clare Kemplay, missing Morley, since yesterday. Christmas bombs and Lucky on the run, Leeds United and the Bay City Rollers, The Exorcist and It Ain't Half Hot Mum. It's winter, 1974, Yorkshire, and Ed Dunford's got the job he wanted. Crime correspondent for the Evening Post. He didn't know it was going to be a season in hell. A dead little girl with a swan's wings stitched to her back. A gypsy camp in a ring of fire. Corruption everywhere you look. In Nineteen Seventy Four , David Peace brings the passion and stylistic bravado of a James Ellroy novel to this terrifyingly intense journey into a secret history of sexual obsession, greed and sadism - the finest British crime debut since Derek Raymond's He Died With His Eyes Open.

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