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fiendfull's review
4.0
Car Park Life is a book about car parks. Not any old car parks, but the car parks found with supermarkets and other chain stores in retail parks. Yes, really. After something of an epiphany in a Morrison's car park that car parks might be something more than they seem, Rees sets on a journey to explore car parks, on foot, and look at the landscapes we ignore, battle for spaces in, and dash across. There's litter, wildlife, dodgy deals, fights, and a whole lot more, as Rees travels through car parks and also highlights the strangest news stories about them.
In its essence, this is very readable psychogeography combined with Brexit and capitalist horror, all covered in a wry and mocking veneer. Rees knows he's just walking around car parks looking for meaning, but that doesn't stop him doing it. The book is strangely fascinating, even to someone (like me) who doesn't drive, and for whom car parks are always approached on foot. At times you might think 'oh, another Sainsbury's car park, fascinating', but actually that feels like the point: these places should be so mundane, but so many things—sex, drugs, violence—happen in car parks. The ending brings together a bit of the environmental future with the fact that looking at car parks raises more questions than it answers, and leaves the reader open to taking what they want from it: an amusing tale of obsession, a chance to muse on what a landscape feature says about capitalism, or a bleak look at the country.
Part story of a weird obsession, part look at neoliberalism and capitalism through a psychogeography lens, and part satirical image of modern Britain, this is a book that forces you to think about car parks and why so many strange things happen in them. And it can't help but make you think about the major car parks in your life, too.
In its essence, this is very readable psychogeography combined with Brexit and capitalist horror, all covered in a wry and mocking veneer. Rees knows he's just walking around car parks looking for meaning, but that doesn't stop him doing it. The book is strangely fascinating, even to someone (like me) who doesn't drive, and for whom car parks are always approached on foot. At times you might think 'oh, another Sainsbury's car park, fascinating', but actually that feels like the point: these places should be so mundane, but so many things—sex, drugs, violence—happen in car parks. The ending brings together a bit of the environmental future with the fact that looking at car parks raises more questions than it answers, and leaves the reader open to taking what they want from it: an amusing tale of obsession, a chance to muse on what a landscape feature says about capitalism, or a bleak look at the country.
Part story of a weird obsession, part look at neoliberalism and capitalism through a psychogeography lens, and part satirical image of modern Britain, this is a book that forces you to think about car parks and why so many strange things happen in them. And it can't help but make you think about the major car parks in your life, too.
dansumption's review
5.0
The premise of this book - a tour of the retail car parks of Brexit Britain - made me think of the similarly tedious-sounding Autonauts of the Cosmoroute by Julio Cortazar and Carol Dunlop (a 1970s month-long drive from Paris to Marseilles, in which the authors visit every Motorway rest area on the way, at a rate of two per day). Like that book, whose authors pretend that their VW Camper Van is in fact a dragon, Rees occasionally spices up his car park descriptions with outrageous fantasies. But, to my surprise, this fabulation really wasn't necessary (and if anything detracted slightly from the book), there really is a lot to talk about, and an infinite variety, in the car parks of Britain's supermarkets, retail parks, and chain hotels.
Each short chapter tackles a different car park and a different theme, from the different part of the car park to their locations, the things they are built on top of, the unauthorised things which go on within them, the litter and nature skulking around their edges, and most sinisterly the astounding range of crimes committed within them (a surprising number of which go unpunished - you are never more anonymous than when you're in a large car park, CCTV or no CCTV). Threaded through the book are short, sharp series of facts and figures, plus details of the unravelling of the author's personal life (some of which will be familiar to readers of his earlier books).
I expected to be at least a little bored by this book, but was surprised to find it compulsively readable.
Each short chapter tackles a different car park and a different theme, from the different part of the car park to their locations, the things they are built on top of, the unauthorised things which go on within them, the litter and nature skulking around their edges, and most sinisterly the astounding range of crimes committed within them (a surprising number of which go unpunished - you are never more anonymous than when you're in a large car park, CCTV or no CCTV). Threaded through the book are short, sharp series of facts and figures, plus details of the unravelling of the author's personal life (some of which will be familiar to readers of his earlier books).
I expected to be at least a little bored by this book, but was surprised to find it compulsively readable.
pap3rcut__'s review
3.0
Car Park Life perfectly capsulates the aesthetic of towns and cities, Rees has ways of telling a story that entices the reader making any subject interesting. This novel illuminates the unusual parts of urban life that don't often get talked about from drug deals and stoners to petrol heads and doughnuts. Car parks are full of life we just don't realise it. Rees goes on a journey across the country from Plymouth to Edinburgh with his wife and kids in tow as he comes across the strangest of things in Britain's car parks. Rees has a very unusual outlook on life and it shines through in his novels and I think that's what I really enjoy about his books as well as his love for the simplicity of a Premier Inn as I completely agree.
ahouseman's review
adventurous
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
I’m not sure what one really expects when they start reading a book about car parks.
From the blurb, I was thinking this would mainly be like a book of nature rating but about a forgotten, industrial space.
The first part of the book (which makes up the first half) lays the ground work of visiting a lot of car parks, but the second and third parts are where something of a conclusion is reached, linking these spaces to the current socio-economic and political climate, which is more what I was expecting from the book overall.
From the blurb, I was thinking this would mainly be like a book of nature rating but about a forgotten, industrial space.
The first part of the book (which makes up the first half) lays the ground work of visiting a lot of car parks, but the second and third parts are where something of a conclusion is reached, linking these spaces to the current socio-economic and political climate, which is more what I was expecting from the book overall.
luluallison's review
I recognised the twin tides of optimism and despair in this book, the hope of transcending what seems like inevitable catastrophe by finding small expressions of mysterious beauty to remind us we are not only doomed. It is funny, well written and engaging. Though the quixotic futility of the crusade was what made it interesting, both for the fact of it and for the writer's own analysis of it, I started to switch off a bit during later descriptions. Probably the bits in between the carparks were what offered the most. The author is clearly well aware of this and his tousling with the relevance or pointlessness was part of what I enjoyed. I'm not sure if that proves or disproves the thesis of the project. But well worth a read.
rogerb's review
3.0
This title passed me by on some psychogeography list and I couldn't resist it. It is, undoubtedly, a book about car parks.
Actually, I had feared a contrived pile of nonsense but he does a more than respectable job of weaving a much wider narrative using retail car parks as his filter and theme. I do think he could have dropped a couple of chapters where it became too laboured for its own good, but I especially liked the chapter on 4WCOP, not least because I attended it the year after him. One of the cover reviews read "Knocks Psychogeography into the dustbin of history where it belongs" - it's pretty hard with a lot of stuff in this area to know just how seriously you need to take it.
3 is harsh. if you like car parks, 5 stars.
Actually, I had feared a contrived pile of nonsense but he does a more than respectable job of weaving a much wider narrative using retail car parks as his filter and theme. I do think he could have dropped a couple of chapters where it became too laboured for its own good, but I especially liked the chapter on 4WCOP, not least because I attended it the year after him. One of the cover reviews read "Knocks Psychogeography into the dustbin of history where it belongs" - it's pretty hard with a lot of stuff in this area to know just how seriously you need to take it.
3 is harsh. if you like car parks, 5 stars.
jackielaw's review
5.0
“For me, the true discovery is rarely the place itself – a location on a map or a building – but in understanding empirically that there are worlds hidden in plain sight, which can become visible if we bother to lift our veils and see the Britain that is, not an idealised Britain that never was.”
Between 2015 and 2018, Gareth E. Rees travelled the length and breadth of Britain visiting retail car parks. His fascination with these spaces began in Hastings, outside his local Morrisons supermarket, where he noticed the variety of activities taking place unregarded by busy shoppers. He decided to explore, especially around the edges of design decisions and consumer behaviour. He recognised that his fascination was perhaps as deviant as many of the exploits beheld.
“The problem has always been that hills don’t interest me as much as streets. Trees not as much as pylons. Foliage not as much as litter. It’s an issue, I know. I’m not proud.”
Divided into chapters that are bookended by photographs the author took on his travels, many details shared are of the ordinary but depicted in ways few readers may have considered. There are musings on people’s actions – their attitudes – and the window this offers on modern societal thinking. The author is not averse to mocking himself.
From his vantage point in the car park, Rees considers the architecture of various outlets. He observes how heritage buildings have been recommissioned – sterilised yet presented as somehow authentic. This neatening for consumers and tourists – the refreshing of blackened walls that once contained widespread misery – reflects how history is often remembered.
“In this country we prefer to dwell among facsimiles and facades, reassured by the convenient lie of the past.”
Activities in car parks include: drug deals, road rage, petrolhead races, sexual pursuits. People scurrying between shops and their cars – rushing to park and then to leave – cannot help but display their animal instincts. They compete for ownership, control and supremacy. They are suspicious of Rees for not behaving as expected.
Given the subject matter, the writing is inexplicably funny (kudos to the author). I particularly enjoyed the chapter titled The Ancestor which is set around Amesbury. Whilst providing an amusing potted history of the place, it hones in on ways in which we attempt to acknowledge and celebrate past events. This is observation rather than overt criticism.
In a chapter titled The Joy of Parking, Rees considers why vast retail car parks came to be provided and now themselves prove a draw to their users.
“Experience the joy of 7,000 free parking spaces.”
“Although I’ll admit that there is some ambiguity in the statement. Does the joy come from parking free of charge, or from the knowledge that 7,000 parking spaces are freely available?”
“I will enjoy their parking spaces without parking and without rewarding them with a purchase for their efforts. I won’t even sneak inside to buy a sandwich. It’s everything they don’t want. I’m an aberration, a freeloader”
There have been many books in recent years that draw attention to issues which make their authors despair of the choices others make that they disagree with. Rees mentions current affairs that worry and depress him but there is no hectoring. Rather these are personal, humble reflections offering a wider, longer term view.
The self-deprecating musings wrap around witty yet piercing insights on behaviours that may be frowned upon if considered – mostly they go unnoticed by those caught up in their own concerns. The news site stories quoted are shocking if unsurprising. Dangers lurk while people pass by unaware.
A poignant yet entertaining story about an urban adventurer and the discoveries he makes, including the many ways in which people break the rules in these widely frequented public spaces. Retail car parks and their margins will now be viewed through a recalibrated lens. Compelling, original and highly recommended.
Between 2015 and 2018, Gareth E. Rees travelled the length and breadth of Britain visiting retail car parks. His fascination with these spaces began in Hastings, outside his local Morrisons supermarket, where he noticed the variety of activities taking place unregarded by busy shoppers. He decided to explore, especially around the edges of design decisions and consumer behaviour. He recognised that his fascination was perhaps as deviant as many of the exploits beheld.
“The problem has always been that hills don’t interest me as much as streets. Trees not as much as pylons. Foliage not as much as litter. It’s an issue, I know. I’m not proud.”
Divided into chapters that are bookended by photographs the author took on his travels, many details shared are of the ordinary but depicted in ways few readers may have considered. There are musings on people’s actions – their attitudes – and the window this offers on modern societal thinking. The author is not averse to mocking himself.
From his vantage point in the car park, Rees considers the architecture of various outlets. He observes how heritage buildings have been recommissioned – sterilised yet presented as somehow authentic. This neatening for consumers and tourists – the refreshing of blackened walls that once contained widespread misery – reflects how history is often remembered.
“In this country we prefer to dwell among facsimiles and facades, reassured by the convenient lie of the past.”
Activities in car parks include: drug deals, road rage, petrolhead races, sexual pursuits. People scurrying between shops and their cars – rushing to park and then to leave – cannot help but display their animal instincts. They compete for ownership, control and supremacy. They are suspicious of Rees for not behaving as expected.
Given the subject matter, the writing is inexplicably funny (kudos to the author). I particularly enjoyed the chapter titled The Ancestor which is set around Amesbury. Whilst providing an amusing potted history of the place, it hones in on ways in which we attempt to acknowledge and celebrate past events. This is observation rather than overt criticism.
In a chapter titled The Joy of Parking, Rees considers why vast retail car parks came to be provided and now themselves prove a draw to their users.
“Experience the joy of 7,000 free parking spaces.”
“Although I’ll admit that there is some ambiguity in the statement. Does the joy come from parking free of charge, or from the knowledge that 7,000 parking spaces are freely available?”
“I will enjoy their parking spaces without parking and without rewarding them with a purchase for their efforts. I won’t even sneak inside to buy a sandwich. It’s everything they don’t want. I’m an aberration, a freeloader”
There have been many books in recent years that draw attention to issues which make their authors despair of the choices others make that they disagree with. Rees mentions current affairs that worry and depress him but there is no hectoring. Rather these are personal, humble reflections offering a wider, longer term view.
The self-deprecating musings wrap around witty yet piercing insights on behaviours that may be frowned upon if considered – mostly they go unnoticed by those caught up in their own concerns. The news site stories quoted are shocking if unsurprising. Dangers lurk while people pass by unaware.
A poignant yet entertaining story about an urban adventurer and the discoveries he makes, including the many ways in which people break the rules in these widely frequented public spaces. Retail car parks and their margins will now be viewed through a recalibrated lens. Compelling, original and highly recommended.
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