Paperboy

The book is fabulous, and I hope it sells forever.

JOANNE HARRIS

Entrancing, funny, deeply moving and wonderfully written. Please read it

ELIZABETH BUCHAN

Upbeat and forgiving...Fowler's South London childhood was deeply weird...but the tone is sunny, and anyone who remembers Mivvis, jamboree bags, streets with no cars, Sid James and vast old Odeons will love this Sixties retro-fest

INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

Paper-dry wit and natural charm...brutally funny

LONDON LITE

A wonderfully vigorous read, confident in its total recall and acute in its deft definitions of characters.

SAGA MAGAZINE

Delightfully written, this funny and engrossing memoir is a wonderful evocation of a Fifties and Sixties childhood

CHOICE 'Book of the Month'

Beautiful, magical and moving

DAILY MAIL

Humorously recounted, Fowler's passion for reading is framed by an affectionate description of his London childhood, adding colour to a memoir packed with anecdotes

FINANCIAL TIMES

His book is an almost Morrissey-like lament, with a similar plangent drollery, for a sixties childhood spent in a backwater of Greenwich. Fowler has both a taste and a flair for the lurid. His mother is lovingly evoked in this memoir...here are the roots of an author who would become romantically committed to the most romantic forms of storytelling. I wonder whether the computer-driven generation will find the same solace and the kind of energy that drives Fowler

NEW STATESMAN

Written truthfully and bringing towards its conclusion a moving reconciliation. It also contains one of the best encapsulations of what it is to be a writer

THE SCOTSMAN

Funny and charming...here a voracious young reader makes his great mental escape from the suburban Stalag of south London via the literature that, once he masters its craft, will lead him back to recreate this lovingly detailed past

Boyd Tonkin, INDEPENDENT 'Books of the Year'

I loved Paperboy. It took me back...the fifties and sixties are represented as a golden age in which to grow up. Christopher Fowler reminds us they were not that great!

JENNI MURRAY

One of the funniest books I've read in a long time. In fact, these pages are packed with so many good lines, even the footnotes are a joy to read. ...Witty and wise, moving but never mawkish, this is the kind of memoir that puts most others to shame

TIME OUT

Absolutely charming...beautifully written, with a sort of English Thunderbolt Kid (Bill Bryson) feel. Highly recommended

Sarah Broadhurst, BOOKSELLER

The misery memoir is dead, replaced by a more upbeat and forgiving take on the past.

The Independent on Sunday

it will delight

New Books Magazine