Blackbox by Nick Walker
Cross a road, take a train or get on an aeroplane and you put your life in the hands of a stranger - every bit as screwed up, every bit as fallible, every bit as human as you are. So, meet an apparently disparate group of people - a comedian whose sole gag consists of committing suicide; an air traffic controller with a fear of flying and a pyschiatrist more in need of therapy than his patients - all of whom are connected to the tragic death of a stowaway on a flight into Birmingham in 1978. Twenty years later, they are powerless to interfere as the identity of the body emerges through stolen black box recordings, answer-machine tapes, surveillance footage and court transcripts. BLACK BOX is their desperate attempt to erase a life on tape.
One of the year's outstanding debuts - Time OutGenuinely original (and how often can you say that?), Blackbox is a masterpiece of loose-limbed, confident storytelling that invites more than 20 characters to your bedside to count down 800 heartbeats before tail-spinning to a dizzying conclusion that is as inevitable as it is utterly unpredictableA mixture of flippant wit, gentle wisdom, tangible ambition and a vibrant (and apparently unhinged) imagination that skids across emotional frequencies at the touch of a dial, Nick Walker's writing is modern but not 'modern', cool but no cucumber and rubber-neck compelling from start to finish. Read this on a plane (Go on. Dare you) but make sure you read it. Secure your own oxygen mask before helping someone else. You may blow into this whistle to attract attention. Assume the crash position. Brace for impact. Brace... - Patrick Neate, author of Twelve Bar Blues and winnA clever, filmic black comedy, in 841 chapters, whose 20 characters all have some connection to the death of a Chinese stowaway. His characters are brilliant, his dialogue sparkles... and it's hilarious - GuardianWalker has put together a random bunch of characters, constructed an extraordinary set of links between them, and then thrown them into a lurid plot... He jumps backwards and forwards, uses the chapter structure to allow off-the-wall reflec
Nick Walker has written, acted and produced drama, including one man shows to audiences of seven and sketches on Radio 4, Nick hates flying.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780747268765 |
| ISBN 10 | 0747268762 |
| Title | Blackbox |
| Author | Nick Walker |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Headline Publishing Group |
| Year published | 2002-05-07 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |