Bedford Park by Bryan Appleyard


Bedford Park
Title : Bedford Park
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0297869744
ISBN-10 : 9780297869740
Language : English
Format Type : ebook
Number of Pages : 320
Publication : First published April 11, 2013

Set in 1912, Bedford Park is not just a place. It is a crucible for enlightenment and modernity inhabited by people who wish to better themselves - and those who should know better. It is a singular suburb architecturally sidestepping the modern whilst encouraging those with new ideas to take up residence. Into this mix sails Cal Kidd from America. In a coffee-house he makes the acquaintance of Binks, a man whose occupation in the City is vague but he seems to know everybody. And so Cal meets real-life characters like Maud Gonne and Frank Harris, while Ford Madox Ford, W B Yeats and Joseph Conrad appear also. Then Binks is gruesomely murdered, and after never really having to deal with anything in his life, Cal the observer now has to act.
The spirit of the age is what makes "Bedford Park" so evocative, a time when everyone tries to invoke the future but often looks to the past to achieve it. Among the host of vivid characters, the greatest is London itself, a city in a constant state of flux whose centre is journalism. All the detail makes the place exotic and exciting - the marathon at the Olympics in 1908, a ride on the Flip Flap in White City, news being chalked up on dock walls for those who couldn't afford papers, a woman peeling potatoes in the Biosphere cinema in Bishopsgate. London has to comment instantly upon itself or be commented upon, always new and important.
"Bryan Appleyard is our foremost guide to understanding contemporary culture. This exploration of what it means to be human today grips the reader from the front page." - "John Gray"
"There are great science writers and there are great art writers - and then there's Bryan Appleyard. He's both." - "John Humphreys"
"Bryan Appleyard is that rarest of birds, a journalist who can mine factual subjects for their poetic resonance right across the spectrum. He is our main man for this kind of writing." - "Clive James"
"One of the most interesting, curious, cultured and trenchant writers on this planet." - "Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of THE BLACK SWAN"
""Bedford Park" is a witty and erudite historical novel, set mostly in London in the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras...It is also a brilliantly lively, often very funny reconstruction of a lost world of artistic endeavour and social idealism through which Appleyard's American abroad wanders in a fruitless search for his true self." - "SUNDAY TIMES"
"Appleyard has created this novel, set in the West London suburb of Bedford Park, around the lives of noted Edwardians...Beautifully written." - "DAILY MAIL"
"Deft characterisations...virtuoso language...dry and economical wit...excellent fiction." - "THE SPECTATOR"

Bedford Park Reviews

  • Kathleen

    Chicago, Bedford Park, mystery. Such wonderful promise with a great cover illustration and on a display table at Hatchards. But inside was a narrative gone terribly wrong. Grimly persisted to the finish but heed the warning to not judge a book by its cover.

  • Bibliophile

    If ever there was a misleading blurb on the back of a book, [i]Bedford Park[/i] has it. Basically a very random cross-section of the Edwardian literary world (at least namedropping them, there's no characterization of any kind!) and ... I guess the whole novel was a giant metaphor for the pointlessness of everything or of the main character or something. Will not reread!

  • Judi Moore

    I enjoy and admire the articles I have read by Bryan Appleyard, so was very pleased to see this new novel by him out last year. His usual preoccupations (architecture and popular science) provide an interesting basis for it. A number of real, historical, people wander through it, playing supporting roles. But what, oh what, is it all about? There is a rite of passage (which lasts an entire adult life). There is a foreigner’s-eye view of London in general and the, apparently real, suburb of Bedford Park in particular. There is a violent death. There is some sex and a little love (not hand in hand). And there is an epilogue which cries out to be a prologue (when it would have made a great deal more sense than it does where it is).

    I found it to be plot-free. This is unfortunate, as I like a novel to have a plot. I know there are many readers of fiction for whom plot is inessential. To you I recommend this book.

  • Ray Downton

    A book brimming with ideas that benefits from a rather colourless main character ,because he describes the charismatic, sometimes real life characters that come into his life. The dialogue is occasionally convoluted and needs rereading, but this may the pompous 'non-action' ideas of some of the characters. The book concludes in a rather melancholic way.