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Plume

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Plume

By: Will Wiles
Narrated by: Nicholas Camm
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About this listen

‘It’s outstanding’ Mail on Sunday, Event Magazine

The dark, doomy humour of Care of Wooden Floors mixed with the fantastical, anarchic sense of possibility of The Way Inn, brought together in a fast moving story set in contemporary London.

Jack Bick is an interview journalist at a glossy lifestyle magazine. From his office window he can see a black column of smoke in the sky, the result of an industrial accident on the edge of the city. When Bick goes from being a high-functioning alcoholic to being a non-functioning alcoholic, his life goes into freefall, the smoke a harbinger of truth, an omen of personal apocalypse. An unpromising interview with Oliver Pierce, a reclusive cult novelist, unexpectedly yields a huge story, one that could save his job. But the novelist knows something about Bick, and the two men are drawn into a bizarre, violent partnership that is both an act of defiance against the changing city, and a surrender to its spreading darkness.

With its rich emotional palette, Plume explores the relationship between truth and memory: personal truth, journalistic truth, novelistic truth. It is a surreal and mysterious exploration of the precariousness of life in modern London.

©2019 Will Wiles (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers Limited City Life Dark Humour Friendship Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Urban Fiction Comedy

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Critic reviews

"In Plume, Will Wiles both re-invents and murders the London novel, in a spectacular act of evil, surgical intensity." (Warren Ellis)

"Wiles is basically Kafka, if Kafka had spent more time in British hotels and pubs." (David Baddiel)
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I really enjoyed the book and was very moved by some of the issues the characters had to deal with but found it all strangely uplifting. Well done Will, you have a great talent!!!!

Incredible! Superbly well written portrayal of working/living in modern London and living with an addiction.

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Immersive and gripping I found myself listening outside my normal commute. I've never listened to an Audible book twice; this might be the first.

A story full of twists, menace and dark humour

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can't make head or tails of this book.

tho i did enjoy Will Wiles other titles

???

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Nicholas Camm did a great performance, which kept me listening for longer than the turgid over-reflective story deserved. His voice is clear, characters separate and a tone that set the protagonist's place in his world. Based on this work I would seek out other books he has narrated.

The actual work I found slow to get going. There is scene setting but this felt like scene paralysis. Muddy, slogging internal thoughts. Never quite moving the story forward. Inclining the listener not to care about the pub bore the story is meant to be about.

Great Reader. Boring Story.

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