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The Dig Street Festival

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About this listen

It's 2006 in the fictional East London borough of Leytonstow. The UK’s pub smoking ban is about to happen, and 38-and-a-half year old John Torrington, a mopper and trolley collector at his local DIY store, is secretly in love with the stylish, beautiful, and middle-class barmaid Lois. John and his hapless, strange, and down-on-their-luck friends, Gabby Longfeather and Glyn Hopkins, live in Clements Markham House - a semi-derelict Edwardian villa divided into unsanitary bedsits, and (mis)managed by the shrewd, Dickensian business man, Mr Kapoor.

When Mr Kapoor, in a bizarre and criminal fluke, makes him fabulously credit-worthy, John surprises his friends and colleagues alike by announcing he will organise an amazing ‘urban love revolution’, aka the Dig Street Festival. But when he discovers dark secrets at the DIY store, and Mr Kapoor’s ruthless gentrification scheme for Clements Markham House, John’s plans take several unexpected and worrisome turns....

Funny, original, philosophical, and unexpectedly moving, The Dig Street Festival takes a long, hard, satirical look at modern British life, and asks of us all, how can we be better people?

©2021 Chris Walsh (P)2021 W F Howes Fiction Historical Fiction Literature & Fiction Satire Comedy Witty Business
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If you like your prose deep, chewy, layered, satirical and Rabelaisian, this is the book for you.
Different from anything I've read in a long time. An endearing trio of main characters.
I rarely read books twice but think I might make an exception in this case because I think there'll be a whole other layer of discovery on second reading.

One I'd read again - and that's rare!

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A thoughtful and at times bizarre examination of the human experience. The narration was superb.

Fascinating

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