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London: City of Disappearances

By: Iain Sinclair
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0141019484
ISBN-13: 9780141019482
Released: 25 Oct 2007
RRP: £14.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

City of Disappointments ; A wasted opportunity - By: G. J. Marsh, 12 Jun 2008
An ambitious volume which brings up some real gems courtesy of Marina Warner, Anthony Frewin, Will Self, Bill Drummond but precious few others. I can't help feeling that Mr Sinclair should have given his contributors a tighter brief or at least been a bit more generous with the scissors in the final edit. Eventuallly the writings become more & more disparate until what you get is an anthology of work alll loosely connected to the capital in some way. Some of the entries (especiallly Sinclair's own ones) are genuinely baffling & the reader is given frustratingly little explanation to their appearance; if this is deliberate, it doesn't work.

If readers are looking for decent anthologies of London social history, myth & ephemera, there are other compendiums on the market that are far more worthwhile.
Perfect to dip into - By: C. O'Brien, 20 Nov 2007
Like Peter Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair is fond of a non-linear approach to the history & geography of a city & this collection of essays snakes around the mystery of London in much the same way as Ackroyd's "London: A Biography".

Perhaps because this is a compilation rather than a work by a single author, it's been more easily accepted as a fascinating fund of anecdote & history which doesn't need to adopt a chronological approach. Intermittently thrilling - & perfect to dip in & out of.