Cocker weaves these treasured artefacts together to illustrate landmark moments in his early life. A self-proclaimed hoarder, Cocker uncovered a deep trove of memories – albeit in the form of chewing gum wrappers, broken glasses, school notebooks, tickets, photos, shirts, vintage soap, beer mats, tapes, badges, and even a dismembered baby doll’s face. What makes the book so fun, however, is that it was inspired by Cocker’s attempts to clear out his home loft. At it’s heart, it is a fond (though unromanticised) chronicle of Jarvis’ early life, growing up in Sheffield and pursuing an endless love affair with popular culture. However, a few months before this momentous apogee, I was delighted to attend a book launch in Manchester for Jarvis Cocker’s latest book release: Good Pop, Bad Pop. It’s a loft story.Įarlier this year, I achieved a long-coveted ambition: to buy tickets to see legendary Britpop band Pulp live in concert! (I waited 11 years, and it’s finally happening next summer!) And, as a life-long Carey Mulligan obsessive, I was delighted to discover that a film adaptation of Spaceman is set for release next year too! I highly, highly recommend reading it beforehand – it’s an indelible joy. I am eagerly awaiting Kalfar’s next novel, A Brief History of Living Forever, due in March 2023. There was one particular scene – featuring Laika the iconic cosmonaut dog – which completely floored me with its delicate, beautiful absurdity. I was genuinely aghast – more than once – at Kalfar’s singular imagination, as well as his erudite and understated wisdom. It brims with humour and pathos, and is stunning in its originality, both in terms of plot and narrative voice. What follows is an inventive meditation on love, family, death and fame – and bacon – which Jakub navigates with the support of a possibly imaginary alien spider. However, out in the vast, stunning expanse of the cosmos, Jakub must watch as his marriage crumbles under the strain of his otherworldly ambitions. He is posted on a dangerous solo mission to Venus, which he accepts in a bid to both achieve fame and atone for his Communist informant father’s wrongdoings. The story follows Jakub Procházka, a Czech orphan turned scientist who is invited to become the country’s first astronaut. Now, I had never heard of this book before, but I was immediately intrigued. I bagged a few, including a hardback copy of Jaroslav Kalfar’s 2017 debut novel, Spaceman of Bohemia. It was an absolutely marvellous shop – cluttered and overflowing, encompassing a broad range of interests (fiction, non-fiction, history, philosophy, theory, politics, art, etc.) Plus, every bibliophile’s dream: bookshelf ladders! Right by the window at the front of the shop, there was a low shelf filled with books concerning Soviet history (Prenzlauer Berg was in former East Berlin, after all).
In July, I was very fortunate to return to one of my favourite cities for my first post-Covid holiday: Berlin! While there, I visited a lovely English-language second hand bookshop in Prenzlauer Berg called ‘ Saint George’s‘. It flitters from poetry to philosophy to frank social observation to joy and to despair – made all the more heart-rending by knowledge of Hyatt’s own sad end. One turns men into angels and they fly at one’s throat.įrom start to end, the abrupt and ceaseless prose is heavy with longing and vagabond melancholia. And – concerning one married man in particular – he is lovelorn to utter despair. He is equal parts hedonistic and aimless, oscillating between self-loathing and self-obsession. Stumbling from day to night and night to day, Hyatt’s protagonist bounces from dreary jobs to friends’ couches to bars and parties to strange, anonymous lovers’ rooms.
Clocking in at just over 160 pages, and uninterrupted by chapter breaks, the entire tome reads as a stream-of-consciousness stumble through quotidian 1960s existence. Largely autobiographical in nature, Love, Leda was only recently unearthed, decades after Hyatt’s tragic death by suicide in 1972.īut there is far more of interest here than the book’s biography alone.
(Prior to this, and following an impoverished childhood, he even taught himself to read and write.) The novel documents the eponymous protagonist’s intimate life as a young, working-class, gay man in London, some years before the legalisation of homosexuality in the UK. Its author, Mark Hyatt, originally wrote the manuscript in around 1965. What makes it so astonishing is that it is not, in fact, new at all. It is still a delightful world.Īt the tail-end of January, Peninsula Press published an astonishing new novel entitled Love, Leda. I feel grateful to be out again, with all the agony in the world. The sun lights up the whole scene and birds are singing.
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