Byron Easy

(Paperback)

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Description

A daring and exuberant debut novel charting one poor soul's terminal journey home It's 24 December, 1999. Byron Easy, a poverty-stricken poet - half-cut and suicidal - sits on a stationary train at King's Cross waiting to depart. In his lap is a bag containing his remaining worldly goods- an empty bottle of red wine, a few books, a handful of crumpled banknotes. He is on the run. Not from the usual writer's trouble - money trouble, soul trouble - but special trouble, of a type you may have problems identifying with at first. As the journey commences, he conjures memories (painful and comic alike) of the recent past, of his roller-coaster London life, and of Mandy - his Amazonian wife - in an attempt to make sense of his terrible, and ordinary, predicament. So what has led him to this point Where are his friends, his familyWhat happened to his dreams And what awaits him at the end of his odyssey north Byron Easy is an epic, baroque sprawling monster of a novel, and a unique portrait of love and marriage, of the flux of memory, and of England in the dying days of the twentieth century by a young British writer of exceptional promise.

Reviews

Theres an addictive charmthat gives a potency to this ambitious tale. -- John Sunyer * Financial Times *
Daring, moving, imaginative and, above all, funny, this is a great debut from a promising novelist. * Sunday Mirror *
[A] beautifully written debut. * Irish Examiner *
An exuberant, stealthily shocking debut razor sharp. * Daily Mail *
From the start of his journey to the amazing ending of his saga we follow with awe and trepidation his moral life as all around him (almost) everyone else shows the human condition at its worst. If there is any literary justice this should sell by the bucket load. Hope it does and we hear again from this terrific first time novelist! * Guardian online *

Author Bio

Jude Cook lives in London. He studied English Literature at UCL, and was a musician and songwriter for the band Flamingoes. Byron Easy is his first novel.