South of the River
  • Published: 1 May 2008
  • ISBN: 9780099502562
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $35.00

South of the River

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Compelling, contemporary, comic, a significant change of direction for Blake Morrison - a kind of English The Corrections but sexier, sharper, broader and (for us) infinitely more recognisable.

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; Harry, Nat's friend and ex-pupil, a journalist on a local paper, with a guilty secret of his own; and Jack, Nat's unexpectedly poignant uncle, who lives for fox-hunting.

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.
  • Published: 1 May 2008
  • ISBN: 9780099502562
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $35.00
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About the author

Blake Morrison

Born in Skipton, Yorkshire, Blake Morrison is the author of bestselling memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? (winner of the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography and the Esquire Award for Non-Fiction) and Things My Mother Never Told Me ('the must read book of the year' - Tony Parsons),. He also wrote a study of the disturbing child murder, the Bulger case, As If. His acclaimed recent novels include South of the River and The Last Weekend. He is also a poet, critic, journalist and librettist. He lives in South London.

portrait photo of Blake Morrison

Also by Blake Morrison

The Executor
Shingle Street
Stop What You're Doing And Read This!
The Last Weekend
Things My Mother Never Told Me
See all

Praise for South of the River

A scintillating read

GQ

An ambitious stab at a state-of-the-nation novel pitched somewhere between Jonathan Coe and Franzen

Time Out

Morrison anatomises our times and achieves that rare thing: the creation of something substantial and important in fiction out of history as it unfolds in the here and now. His filleting of the new Labour zeitgeist is so ruthless and precise that one is torn between hilarity and despondency

Neel Mukherjee, The Times

Brilliantly written, horribly truthful, utterly absorbing

Kate Saunders, The Times

This is Morrison breaking free: being populist and literary, simultaneously, and showing in the process that he can do something entirely different

Peter Stanford, Independent

Intimate and epic, compulsively readable

Tony Parsons

An enthralling novel of the way we live now in Blair's Britain... a marvellous account-taking of our hopes, lifestyles careers and even souls in an age where communication has never been easier, but to find someone who'll listen has never been harder

Roger Perkins, Sunday Telegraph

An accessible romp, ripe for the summer market

Observer

A big, ambitious book...carefully structured, intelligently developed

Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times

Often very funny, constantly vigorous, constantly intelligent, constantly enjoyable

Evening Standard

A work that is often very funny, constantly vigorous, always intelligent and enjoyable

Scotsman

A satisfying chunky novel set mainly during New Labour's first government

Ludovic Huntley-Tilney, Financial Times