This Week's Hot Reads

Ten Storey Love Song. By Richard Milward. 304 Pages. Harper Perennial. Ten Storey Love Song
by Richard Milward

The story of a struggling artist who is discovered and corrupted, all in one paragraph.

British novelist Richard Milward follows up his successful debut, Apples, with Ten Storey Love Song, a whirlwind of a third-person narrative told in just one paragraph. Set in Milward’s hometown of Middlesbrough, the novel follows protagonist Bobby the Artist’s ascension to fame. Discovered by a London gallery owner named Bent Lewis as he is painting in his bedroom, Bobby brings his unlikely muses—Johnnie, a petty thief and drug peddler; Georgie, Bobby’s girlfriend; and their friend Alan Blunt, a 40-year-old truck driver who is disturbingly obsessed with an 8-year-old-girl—along for the ride. It’s a rags-to-riches story, complete with plenty of drugs, booze, and sex, but the archetype has a refreshing twist here. As soon as it starts to seem as if Bobby’s story is too good to be true, Milward yanks him back to where he belongs: in Middlesbrough with his friends. Author Irvine Welsh writes in The Guardian, “Milward is a major talent…When writers are being churned out of creative-fiction courses like salmon from fish farms, he possesses that scarcest quality: a highly original and engaging voice.”

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