Reviews

Marshland: Dreams and Nightmares on the Edge of London by Gareth E. Rees, Ada Jusic

schopflin's review

4.0

This gets four stars from me although I am no great psychogeography fan because it's extremely well written and immensely evocative of place (one I know well). From the latter the only anomaly for me was the absence of the Chareidi community, who are a very visually present part of the area. But he gets half a star alone for the Victorian gentlemen who pass for hipsters.

shimmer's review

5.0

I'm going to try to review this properly when I have a chance, but it's quite a book. Rees' cross-genre, hybrid approach of blending essays, stories, comics, and visual art (by Ada Jusic) is the perfect choice for a space that is never only one thing or another and a complicated hybrid itself. The book is smart, sometimes funny (including a magnificently delivered set piece joke about bloggers), richly descriptive, and deeply compelling. This is the kind of book I've been wanting to see more of from environmental writers, taking a place seriously in ALL its dimensions from the social to the artistic to the historical to the imaginative to the polluted.

kirstiekins's review

4.0

I loved this book. It gets a little confusing at times, but once you gt the hang of the narrative, it's a pretty easy read. If you are familiar the area, you know what he is writing about, but if you aren't you can always head over, and see the novel come ti life in front of your eyes.