830. Downriver

Downriver
Iain Sinclair
1991
Around 545 pages

At some point in my mind, I conflated Iain Sinclair and Iain Banks into one Mega Iain that I was a huge fan of. So I was surprised to find I didn't enjoy this, having loved the Culture series and Crow Road. I realized my mistake by about page 200, and swiftly exonerated Banks for Sinclair's crimes against reading.

Downriver is the story of London’s docklands during the rule of the Widow, an exaggerated version of Margaret Thatcher, because all our British novels will be dunking on her from now on. The novel takes place primarily in the East End. Our narrator is a local who works for a production company, sniffing out authentic docklands. It's a set of twelve stories taking place in the near future.

This is just one of those novels that is hard to click with unless you are overly familiar with London docklife in the 1990s. The humor didn't work for me, and 545 pages was way too much for me. I had bad Beckett flashbacks.

Sorry for lumping you with this guy, Banks. 

RATING: **---

Interesting Facts:

Sinclair has a flat in Marine Court, the art-deco building modeled after an ocean liner in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex.

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