Author:P.G. Wodehouse
The stories in this collection reflect Wodehouse’s own happy schooldays at Dulwich College but they also do a good deal more. Although among his earliest attempts at fiction they give fascinating glimpses of a time when motor cars were novelties, schoolmasters wore mortar boards and gowns, and America was a rising power in the world.
The best of them display the author’s love of games and knack for neat plotting. In one, a resourceful teenaged heroine helps a truant schoolboy cricketer by marooning his credulous schoolmaster at the top of a church tower until the match is over. Another describes a boy escaping from the scene of his crime by a passing car, only to be caught out by a last-minute revelation. Several Sherlock Holmes parodies read as what they are – high-spirited experiments – but the longer stories delve deeper into character: together, they recreate a vanished world of school shops, fagging, Latin prep and hearty teas.
A warts and all look at modern policing on the frontline, Thomas pulls no punches as modern British life is played out in all its absurd glory … Dark and hilarious, Ugly Bus is never short of compelling.
—— Hull Daily MailUgly Bus is a blend of darkness and humour … Just when you think it has no more twists and turns to offer, the novel's final scene is startlingly revelatory about who and what a particular person is … there are characters here whose story could well be continued in a third novel … Bring it on, I say, provided it has the tension, momentum, observational keenness and dry wit of this one.
—— Sheenagh Pugh blogI think what struck me more than anything else was how believable everything was and Thomas' brilliance in setting scenes, creating characters who I felt I could genuinely see and relentless black humour, darkness and pure grit. It's sweary, it's dirty and it's real.
—— Plastic RosariesBrilliant
—— Daily MailA gripping read... This is a book that will get you thinking – and thanking your lucky stars for a good night's sleep... I loved it
—— Jenny Green , SunCalhoun’s prose is razor sharp, concise yet hauntingly descriptive... I wouldn’t be surprised if Black Moon turns out to be the best debut novel of 2014
—— Jim Dempsey , BookmunchThe novel is a heart-stopping quest
—— Guardian , David BarnettCalhoun vividly depicts the societal collapse that results when people are no longer able to differentiate dreaming from reality... Skilled and polished
—— James Lovegrove , Financial TimesOne of those perfectly simple concepts which can be summed up in a sentence. Great fun
—— BooksellerBlack Moon is the kind of book I envy as a writer, and seek out as a reader -- a novel of ideas wrapped in an gripping, expertly constructed story, full of feeling and intelligence. Kenneth Calhoun has his own distinctive voice, a voice I hope (and expect) to be hearing more from in years to come
—— Charles Yu, author of Sorry Please Thank YouCalhoun’s epidemic, this new and improved insomnia, sinks us into a world where ‘sleepers’ are the target of violent rage. Here we see the erosion of the everyday ruses that allow us to soldier on, the ugly truths we run from gaining ground. Black Moon is a powerful, beautiful debut.
—— John Brandon, author of Citrus County and A Million HeavensA gratifying, brooding book
—— ObserverCompelling
—— Andrew Neather , Evening StandardAstounding... A work of such sincerity that, to paraphrase Baudelaire, the paper shrivels and flares at the touch of his fiery pen
—— Daniel Fraser , QuietusFree-form, fear-filled, densely descriptive…Norway’s biggest literary star since Ibsen… [Knausgaard] has no obvious superiors among the writers now available to an English-reading public
—— Leo Robson , New Statesman
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