Will Sargent reviewed Londoners by Craig Taylor
Review of 'Londoners' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
I will summarize this book with several quotes:
"One day I was in Sainsbury's, and I suddenly realized that if I stayed in London, I'd be in exactly the same place in ten or twenty years."
"There's an English thing -- and maybe a London thing -- about never living up to promises."
"I mean, if you're striving for success, you end up with something like America, and nobody wants to be like America, really."
This book is a collection of interviews with Londoners, done by a reporter who tried to get a cross-section of humanity. It's trying to be Studs Terkel's "Working". It's about as depressing, although I have such a personal and visceral reaction to the book that it's hard to be objective (hence the three stars, when I really want to give it negative five).
I grew up in London. I recognize the city. I recognize the …
I will summarize this book with several quotes:
"One day I was in Sainsbury's, and I suddenly realized that if I stayed in London, I'd be in exactly the same place in ten or twenty years."
"There's an English thing -- and maybe a London thing -- about never living up to promises."
"I mean, if you're striving for success, you end up with something like America, and nobody wants to be like America, really."
This book is a collection of interviews with Londoners, done by a reporter who tried to get a cross-section of humanity. It's trying to be Studs Terkel's "Working". It's about as depressing, although I have such a personal and visceral reaction to the book that it's hard to be objective (hence the three stars, when I really want to give it negative five).
I grew up in London. I recognize the city. I recognize the people as well. I couldn't wait to get away from these people. There are security guards, manicurists, interpreters, bankers and barristers. London makes use of these people. They talk about their jobs. They talk about how they get by, from day to day. They talk about trying to survive.
Almost no-one in this book has joy, or hopes and dreams, unless the dream is "leave Afghanistan or Iran for some place more tolerant." And there's no sense of change, either. Everything is as it was, just as I left it. People complaining about change in the book... have always complained about change.
But there is very little sense of the future in this book. Everything I take love and try not to take for granted about San Francisco is absent here: no programmers, no aerospace engineers, no people making robots or 3d printers or massive fire breathing sculptures in the desert.
I will never read this book again.