GB84

GB84, David Peace's fifth novel, is a gripping, tautly plotted dramatisation of the miners' strike in which real events (Orgreave, the Brighton bomb) and real people (Arthur Scargill, Margaret Thatcher, Ian MacGregor) mingle imperceptibly with his creations. "This novel", he notes in the acknowledgements, "is a fiction, based on fact" and those who recall The Comic Strip Present's Hollywood skit Strike will be happy, to discover that Peace does not take liberties with the strike's trajectory. Key events are faithfully chronicled here but his 1984 is, arguably, as sinisterly dystopian as anything Orwell could have envisioned.

How, perhaps, could it not be? His novel plunges into the very heart of the darkest days of Thatcherism. Inhabiting, in prose, so gaunt in places it feels as though it could easily have been lifted from surveillance reports, a political epoch when fear about an imminent nuclear apocalypse led to "99 Red Balloons" topping the charts and Mrs Thatcher declared open season on the striking miners, branding them the enemy within.

The nefariousness of the government's overt and covert campaigns against the miners is tapped a la James Ellroy for their full dramatic effect. In Stephen "The Jew" Sweet, a strike-bashing arch-media manipulator and his driver-cum-henchmen Neil Fontaine with his neo-Nazi hirelings, Peace represents the insidious practices of a state hell bent on crushing the dispute. While his portrayal of a hubristic Scargill and an NUM executive, beset by incompetence, corruption, bureaucracy and petty rivalries, depicts a union management hopelessly outflanked by comparison. The ordinary miners (whose plights are voiced by Peace in a couple of running narratives in Yorkshire dialect) are left to face the grind of the strike. Their desperation and, not unjustified paranoia, neatly illustrated by one striker's belief that Band Aid has been contrived to wrestle donations from the miners' charitable fund. --Travis Elborough

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Much, much better... - Rated
I previously reviewed David Peace's first novel in this quartet, and found it wanting. This is a much more solid effort.

In the main, this improvement is the result of focusing on a clear and available plot - the miners' strike of 1984. This gives the book a trajectory, pace, and hook that was missing from the first book. Peace has also toned down the cod Yorkshirisms and made this a more readable book as a result.

Problems still remain. Once again, many of his characters are interchangeable (e.g. Neil Fontaine and the Mechanic), and there is no single character drawn with sufficient depth or power to hold the story together. His drawings of real-life individuals such as Arthur Scargill read like a cop-out to me, as if Peace was wary of offending the still-alive, or fearful of a law suit.

Overall, though, the whole piece hangs together well, and is more convincing in evoking a mood and a time.

Scab! Scab! Scab! - Rated
I came to this book after reading Peace's brilliant "The Damned United" and found it another very powerful piece of writing. I am old enough to remember the miner's strike and the huge divisions it caused throughout the country. Peace has managed to convey this with the number of plots and sub plots that run through the book. Some of these do not quite work, however, what does come across and what Peace describes with great clarity is the anger and the sense of the inevitablity of the strike's conclusion. Anyone who feels nostalgic for the Thatcher years should read this book.

Diamond hard and incredibly powerful - Rated
Quite simply this is one of the most forceful and relentless slabs of prose I've ever encountered - and although I may not have succeeded in making it sound like it, that's a definite compliment. People may gripe about the echoes of Ellroy (which I personally feel are less of a big deal than they're made out to be), but Ellroy never made me well with tears at the same time as his writing made me feel like I'd been punched in the throat. Astonishing, in a word.

disappointed - Rated
Firstly, I hate to put a book down and give up so i persevered. Secondly, I wanted to know more about the miners strike, as a young child I had no recollection of it. But I'm afraid the multiple plot lines got pretty confusing and appeared never to be tied up, leaving the reader (myself) wondering what the point of such characters as Malcolm were. Characters such as Neil & the Mechanic were never really developed and should have been left out. The miners dialogue and the Jew & Terry's stories made GB84 interesting and insightful but he should have left it there. Perhaps my reading habits aren't mature or diverse enough to appreciate all the separate complex plot lines, but a perfect example of a good book written in the style of multiple plot lines was Arundhati Roys 'The God of Small Things' which succeeded and flourished whereas 'GB84' is ruined by sticking to this formula. I wouldn't recommend anyone reading this because it is disjointed and alot of hard work, without a particularly great reward at the end. This book is lucky to get 3 stars.

David Peace 1 James Ellroy 0 - Rated
I read David Peace's GB84 as it came out. I am currently reading James Ellroy's American Tabloid. Of the two Peaces' is by far the more compelling. GB84 is one of the angriest books that I've ever read whereas American tabloid comes across as just that, tabloid styled conspiracy gossip for the bloodthirsty masses, vaguely titillating and nothing else, basta. If you've watched the Sopranos, then you've seen it all. On the other hand there is absolutely nothing titillating about the description of the two poor buggers beaten awake in their little tent and then left spat on and bleeding at the side of the road by the mechanic and his government sponsored goons (in GB84) only sorrow only the deepest regret. GB84 is an amazing read; the tabloid is at best a B movie in search of its Jimmy Cagney.