London Brakes by John Muckle
LONDON BRAKES is a wonderfully intense novel. Muckle quickly spins readers into the life web of the wandering protagonist, Tony Guest, as he makes repeated attempts to find, not just purpose in life, but explanations of fate. A literary artisan, Muckle's carefully crafted descriptions that create the setting of 1980's London allow readers to witness an England on the brink of a globalizing era. The narrator embarks on a journey that, in some ways, recalls that of the American road novel, for Tony Guest is solitary man whose travels are made and limited by his motorcycle and the depths of his thought. Revealing himself as a master of dialogue, John Muckle has written a novel that, in its exploration, contends with questions of social mobility, class, and inequity, effectively rendering a novel that is as honest to reality as our own perceptions of everyday life.
(Review by Shokry Eldaly)
See our interview with the author of LONDON BRAKES, John Muckle