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The Taxi Queue
The Taxi Queue
Jul 22, 2025 8:15 PM

Author:Janet Davey

The Taxi Queue

Two men meet by chance in the taxi queue outside Paddington station one January night. Richard is in his mid-forties, apparently happily married, with two children. Abe is young, and casually manipulative. The men share a taxi and, on impulse, Richard invites Abe into his home- an action that sends ripples not only through his own life and that of his wife, but also through the fragile existence of Abe's younger sister, Kirsty, who is herself unsure of the best way to settle down...

Reviews

Not since Penelope Fitzgerald's pen was stilled has there been so transcendent and workmanlike a novel in English

—— Candia McWilliam

Davey is a beautiful writer

—— Financial Times

[A] skillful handling of words. She is able to create intimacy brilliantly...beautifully observed

—— Time Out

Subtle and challenging...attempts something radical with the fictional form: it eludes novelistic norms in favour of something more like life

—— Guardian

Davey is a deft observer of the inequalities of nature that exist within families

—— Daily Telegraph

A novel that feels more like real life than any other book you will read this year

—— Independent

With the lightest of touches this beguiling novelist expounds the dilemmas of contemporary living

—— Times Literary Supplement

Demands your complete and total attention . . . pulls together at the end in a gripping climax and wonderful multi dimensional characters . . . a new and very powerful voice in the world of fantasy.
Highly Recommended.

—— PARMENION BOOKS

A sweeping novel of great power.

—— TOR.COM

This is an astonishing book and all the more amazing given that it is Stella Gemmell’s debut. It combines extraordinary scope with first class characterization, devastating and visceral battles, a multi-layered plot and a tightly-focused narrative that keeps you reading, eager for the next page. The City is easily the best fantasy novel I’ve read in the last decade.

—— JAMES BARCLAY, bestselling author of ‘The Legends of the Raven’

Haunting, distinctive voices. Mary's spare simple words paint brilliant pictures in the reader's mind. Leyshon's imaginative powers are considerable

—— Independent

Leyshon is a master of domestic suspense . . . Slender but compelling, the charm is to be found as much in its spare, evocative style as in the moving candour of its narrator

—— Observer

Masterful - crude, violent and poetic by turns... Its banter, outrage and razor wit sing off the page. A film, one suspects, isn't far off

—— Arifa Akbar , Independent

It's brilliant and even more thrilling than its predecessor

—— Simon Humphreys , Mail on Sunday

A brilliantly funny, scary, sweeping novel with all the energy of Welsh's debut, but imbued with a wider sense of political and social engagement

—— Doug Johnstone , Independent on Sunday

I'm not sure that in 2012 there will be a single novel, never mind half a dozen, with more verve or nous or life in it than Skagboys. Ye kin pure tell they Booker gadgies'll no huv the baws but...

—— Anthony Cummins , Literary Review

Trainspotting may be a masterpiece but Skagboys is the reason the artist painted it, and sometimes that's the most compelling story

—— Joanna McGarry , Stylist

A cracking read.

—— Time Out

Skagboys is a compelling tale...a seriously entertaining piece of work

—— Peter Murphy , Irish Times

Skagboys, technically, is a prequel to the Leith author's brilliant 1993 debut...the result is a longer, deeper and more affecting work, one which explains and explores the circumstances under which Renton, Sick Boy, Tommy, Spud and Begbie - a roll call as familiar as Disney's Seven Dwarves for readers of a certain age - became the characters they did... It's an undeniably funny book, funny in that three-wit way of being at once visceral and true. Welsh's knack for dialogue - both ineternal and conversational - remains virtuosic and often exhilarating. It makes for characters you can't help but care about even the psychopaths and amoral chancers like Begbie and Sick Boy... Welsh's finest work to date

—— Ben Machell , The Times

One of the most significant writers in Britain. He writes with style, imagination, wit and force.

—— Times Literary Supplement

The voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent.

—— The Times

It was never going to be light reading, but Welsh's vigour, wit and energy still make it compulsive

—— Charlotte Sinclair , Vogue

While you can place him in a literary tradition which flows from Alasdair Gray and James Kelman (and maybe Joyce before that), Welsh remains a lapsed punk, hung up on the Velvets and Iggy Pop

—— Alastair McKay , Evening Standard

Like Trainspotting, Skagboys thrusts along with the exuberance of its episodic stories. Welsh hasn't lost his flair for comic set pieces

—— Robert Collins , Sunday Times

Welsh somehow manages to be both the Zola of Therese Raquin, and Dostoevsky's Underground Man, ranging between quasi-scientific perspective and a more immersed, troubling one. That he does so for the most part in a furious low Scots vernacular - filthy, or fulthy, and hugely funny at times - may seem remarkable

—— Keith Miller , Daily Telegraph

If you too loved the colloquial tangle of Trainspotting, you'll find a similar rhythm in Skagboys

—— Andrew Collins , Word Magazine

Welsh revisits his old demons to give us the Trainspotting prequel...Expect more of the same raw wit and energy.

—— Toni & Guy

Engaging, heartfelt and brutal.

—— welovethisbook.com

Quite simply a masterpiece…at least as assured and vibrant in its characterization as Trainspotting, Skagboys is even more on the money politically… this novel more than any other , (including its brilliant predecessor) stands as our spiritual and moral history.

—— The Scotsman

There is enough of what Welsh does well — needle-sharp dialogue, vivid characters and a certainty of place — to make Skagboys his best work in many years…an essential read.

—— Timothy Mo , Irish Examiner

Welsh always spins his yarns with grisly élan.

—— Extra Time

I ended up charmed beyond measure, if that is the right word for a novel whose odd moments of poignance are regularly booted into touch by death, disillusionment and dereliction.

—— D J Taylor , Spectator

Every bit as impressive as Trainspotting

—— Daily Telegraph

Visceral, tragic and comic, with Welsh’s schlock-shock appeal

—— Arifa Akbar , i

If you enjoyed Trainspotting, you will adore this prequel... I think that Welsh has achieved the impossible and produced a prequel that betters the main text

—— Nudge

Filthy, furious and very funny, this is Welsh back on blistering top form

—— Mail on Sunday
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