Careless Talk by Michael Richardson
Young Morley Charles worries that he's just not clever enough for the city's art school. But the lies he tells to advance himself in the eyes of friends, family and the local priest bring all manner of trouble. Imagine if Michael Frayn's Spies had been set in Birmingham with the daftest, funniest, most self-deluding schoolboy at its heart. Well, here is Morley Charles again, the inventive and sexually curious hero of The Pig Bin, but now he has artistic ambitions and anxieties about links between his family and the Blackshirts. Careless Talk is a glorious comedy of misunderstandings set in a seemingly ordinary end-of-wartime suburb.
The dialogue is brilliantly lively and the period scene setting beautifully rendered; it can make you laugh out loud * Independent *
Richardson has a gift for idiomatic dialogueBut what is most impressive in these novels is the recreation of the class consciousness of the 1940s * Guardian *
A wonderfully warm and humorous evocation of a late 1940s Birmingham childhood, whose underlying sharpness never allows it to descend into simple nostalgia * D.J. Taylor *
A moving and often very funny account of the painful adolescence of a young art student shortly after the end of World War II. Morley Charles is agonisingly self-conscious; such is the author's skill and accuracy I ended up caring very much about him * David Nobbs *
Richardson has a gift for idiomatic dialogueBut what is most impressive in these novels is the recreation of the class consciousness of the 1940s * Guardian *
A wonderfully warm and humorous evocation of a late 1940s Birmingham childhood, whose underlying sharpness never allows it to descend into simple nostalgia * D.J. Taylor *
A moving and often very funny account of the painful adolescence of a young art student shortly after the end of World War II. Morley Charles is agonisingly self-conscious; such is the author's skill and accuracy I ended up caring very much about him * David Nobbs *
MICHAEL RICHARDSON spent his teaching career as head of art in Birmingham secondary schools. His short stories, poems and articles have appeared in the Sunday Times, Mayfair, Private Eye and London Magazine, and his paintings have been widely exhibited. He enjoys walking in areas supplied with old-fashioned pubs not too far from each other, inventing things and, like Morley Charles, masquerading as a foreigner when the occasion demands.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780955138461 |
| ISBN 10 | 0955138469 |
| Title | Careless Talk |
| Author | Michael Richardson |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Profile Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2007-10-01 |
| Number of pages | 272 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |