Clare Lowdon’s novel is a sharp, sometimes funny but always bracingly honest look at the lives of contemporary young Londoners who below the surface are having a lot less fun than it seems. Tamsin, a failed concert pianist, has an adoring boyfriend but she isn’t sure she if that is what she actually wants. Chris, a soon to be deployed soldier, can’t forget about Tamsin even though they met, only briefly, years ago. And Callum, the adoring boyfriend, likes (but doesn’t trust) Chris and is battling with a number of serious demons of his own. Each of the characters is well observed and has a fundamentally flaw and reading the book is a bit like watching a slow motion crash; that even though you have a pretty good idea how it’s going to end up you simply cannot stop looking. That’s what makes the title, Left of the Bang, so apt as it is a military term for the build up to an explosion. In short, well written, hard to put down but be prepared for the kick from the brutal honesty.
Daringly, radically honest and very, very funny, this is the best novel yet about the 'lost generation' of young Londoners today. Left of the bang: a military term for the build-up to an explosion. For failing concert pianist Tamsin Jarvis, the pressure is mounting. She thought she was happy with her adoring schoolteacher boyfriend Callum, but when Chris comes into their lives, that starts to change. In a few months Chris will be gone, leaving for his first tour of Afghanistan. Nothing seems to be working out the way Tamsin wants it to - in fact, she's not even sure what it is she wants. With sharp, satirical humour, unparalleled social observation, extreme sexual honesty and great empathy, Claire Lowdon has captured the foibles, hopes and difficulties that characterise a strata of young London today. A funny, unflinching insider's view on the generation born in the 1980s - who are often having much less fun than it seems - this is a Vanity Fair for our times.
'A remarkably compelling and shrewd look at the way we live now. Clear-eyed, audacious and disarmingly honest.' William Boyd
'Claire Lowdon has written the definitive novel of a generation of Londoners. So involved did I become in their lives, so closely did I feel I knew them, that the note of disquiet that carries through the pages like the eerie mewl of a tuning fork absolutely levelled me when finally it reached its full glass-shattering resonance three-quarters of the way through.' Gavin Corbett
Author
About Claire Lowdon
Claire Lowdon read English at Oxford and is the Assistant Editor of Arete. She has written for Arete, Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, the Observer and The Sunday Times.
