Unreadable. Gave up. ( )

Hard one to describe, seems to be a book about trying to write a book. Lots of interviews, rumors, opinions. Mostly regarding the history of hackney in terms of the artists who have moved through it over the years.
Despite it being completely outside of my areas of interest or knowledge i still found it quite good even with its length. ( )

As someone who grew up in Hackney in the 1980s this hits many sweet spots. I suspect that for a lot of readers it will veer between whimsy, over-detailed introspection and even self-indulgence. It is certainly not an easy read - it requires both concentration and imagination just to handle the language - and at 600 pages it is best tackled in 60 page bites.

Sinclair continues his fascination with how the geography and myths of location affect our lives, but this is an intensely intimate portrait, a biography not of place but rather a particular pocket of time and left-wing politics that indelibly stamped Hackney as the place to be in the early Eighties for thinkers and writers. It was a terrible place to live - no-one had any money ever, but it was also living proof that money wasn't needed, and that a good story sufficed.

Sinclair manages to capture through multi-layered vignettes some of the chaotic semiotic meaning and meaningless of the place - all those who were there have a special affectionate bond with the place. This book is, one strongly suspects, written with them in mind, and those who weren't there may find the lack of identification hard going. ( )

A bit of a muddle. As with all of Sinclair's work, the images arrest and move, though the interviews obscure his talents in this sprawling work. Orson Welles and Moby Dick keep bubbling to the surface, illustrating some grand unrealized desire. Sinclair's neighborhood Hackney is disappearing, or evolving. The material phantoms of progress is exacting a due. This formless exploration attempts a collage of evidence. The concluding sections featuring Will Self and Astrid Proll are remarkable.
( )

I understand that not everyone can cope with Sinclair's ever-referential, sometimes overdescriptive and obscure style, but I've learned to love it over the years. There's no overarching narrative point to this book - it's a purely pleasurable, surprising, disturbing and illuminating delve into the history of a little bit of London, especially during the 1970s and 1980s. A must for anyone who knows the area, and highly recommended for people interested in London during the period. ( )