South of the River

By Blake Morrison

2008

First Published

3.15

Average Rating

528

Number of Pages

16H07M

Audio Length

Intimate and disconcerting, compelling and comic, an anatomy of the way things are, South of the River is the big British novel for our times - and a tour de force. It opens on the 'new dawn' of Labour's election victory in 1997, and ends five years later. But this is not so much 'state of the nation' as state of our souls, marriages, families, hopes and careers - a sharp and sexy portrait of a dysfunctional group of characters, all different yet connected. There's Nat, failed dramatist and reluctant lecturer, falling for a younger woman; Anthea, an eco-friendly lost soul obesessed with foxes; Libby, hardworking mother and advertising executive, the family breadwinner; Harry, Nat's friend and ex-pupil, a journalist on a local paper, with a guilty secret of his own; and Jack, Nat's blimpish but unexpectedly poignant uncle, who lives for fox-hunting, and runs a failing engineering company in East Anglia. Beneath the bright familiar world of Blair's Britain, there's a dark undertow of political and personal disillusion, of mythologies and urban myths that circle round our apparently comfortable lives. South of the River, a tale of five people, two rivers, and many Englands, metropolitan and rural, black and white, is gloriously readable and brimming with art and life.

Avg Rating

3.15

Number of Ratings

174

5 STARS

4 STARS

28%

3 STARS

42%

2 STARS

16%

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Blake Morrison

Author · 14 books

Blake Morrison was educated at Nottingham University, McMaster University and University College, London. After working for the Times Literary Supplement, he went on to become literary editor of both The Observer and the Independent on Sunday before becoming a full-time writer in 1995. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and former Chair of the Poetry Book Society and Vice-Chair of PEN, Blake has written fiction, poetry, journalism, literary criticism and libretti, as well as adapting plays for the stage. His best-known works are probably his two memoirs, "And When Did You Last See Your Father?" and "Things My Mother Never Told Me." Since 2003, Blake has been Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College. He lives in south London, with his wife and three children.