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Junkie Love
Junkie Love
Aug 17, 2025 8:41 PM

Author:Phil Shoenfelt

Junkie Love

Camden Town. The late 1980s. A hinterland of rundown squats, petty crime and hard drugs.

Amid this sordid milieu, junkies Phil and Cissy go about their daily routine of sex, shooting up and dodging the police. For a while they have each other and nothing else seems to matter. But as their addictions worsen, money runs short and Cissy's psychotic ex-boyfriend is released from prison, their relationship begins to disintegrate into mutual distrust and loathing...

Raw, repellent and yet shot through with mordant wit, Junkie Love is Phil Shoenfelt's semi-fictionalised account of the heroin addiction that almost cost him his sanity and his life.

Reviews

A nice, nasty read. I enjoyed it a lot

—— Nick Cave

A fine, gutsy, spare rendering of the drug underworld

—— Will Self

A modern evocation of classic fin de siecle literature, complete with classy illustrations ... This love affair between a man, a woman and a needle goes the same tender, heartbreaking way as Hubert Selby Jr.'s Requiem for a Dream. From the warm glow of kindred spirits binding with the chemical mix of love and heroin to the suppurating end, Junkie Love is as beautifully written as it is presented.

—— Bizarre

During their time in the underworld, he and his girlfriend learnt painful, strange things about addiction and identity, and he enunciates them beautifully in this heavy little book....essential reading for anyone interested in how things go wrong

—— Financial Times

The perfect summer read... with Cooper's trademark puns, a massive cast and lots of sex - it's a winner

—— Daily Express

An absolute joy

—— In Dublin

Hilarious, heart warming and intensely moving

—— Yorkshire Post

Hugely gratifying in the way that only Cooper can be

—— Mail on Sunday

Triumphantly good

—— The Sunday Times

The prospect of Jilly's return, with a novel set in the glamorous international art world and promising "oodles of bad behaviour, intrigue, passion, tears and laughter", will surely cheer all but the most misanthropic

—— Bookseller

There is enough plot for several novels here (enough sex for dozens), all vividly conveyed in the author's excitable style... Her many fans will not be disappointed

—— Literary Review

This modern day mythical fantasy is Anne Rice on an epic scale, a hugely imagined world. A chiller thriller from cold of Russia, this one's been selling like hot cakes around the world

—— Sunday Sport
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