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jonfaith 's review for:
London Overground: A Day's Walk Around the Ginger Line
by Iain Sinclair
By Sinclair's wayward standards London Overground is a strangely focused account of a strangely controlled expedition around the new Ginger Line which brought above ground train routes through areas of London which had been bereft since Thatcher took her throne. I will use Sinclair's own term for this impeccable prose: managed gloom. There's a poesis in decay for the author. One thinks of Jules Renard or more famously Harold Pinter.
Linking Angela Carter, JG Ballard and a host of lesser figures, the account is both heartbreaking and forever fascinating. We have Beckett during his troubled faze, Rimbaud and Verlaine engaging in spats and using fish to prove a point. Most bizarre of all is Boris Johnson. That holds true in all contexts. Here, he's the Mayor of London and whistling about on his bicycle. I recognize that Sinclair isn't for everyone but he's endlessly intriguing -- worth a look.
Linking Angela Carter, JG Ballard and a host of lesser figures, the account is both heartbreaking and forever fascinating. We have Beckett during his troubled faze, Rimbaud and Verlaine engaging in spats and using fish to prove a point. Most bizarre of all is Boris Johnson. That holds true in all contexts. Here, he's the Mayor of London and whistling about on his bicycle. I recognize that Sinclair isn't for everyone but he's endlessly intriguing -- worth a look.