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Night-Shift Office Cleaner → Shows you are "viewing the real London".
Cokehead Magazine Editor → "Wickedly satirising a vapid press world."
A Polish Person → Shows your novel is "in tune with the times", "bang up to date".
Cockney → Shows you are Martin Amis.
Cockney Who Acts Twenty Years Out Of Date → Shows you are latter-day Martin Amis.
Jew → Shows you are Howard Jacobson.
Martin Amis → Shows you are Martin Amis taking a postmodern turn.
Character Called "Lionel Asbo" → Martin, what the fuck do you even think you're doing?THE ISLINGTON NOVELLondon, as we have established, is a melting pot. Unless your novel is set in Islington or Hampstead, in which case it is populated entirely by an odourless, taste-free, shapeless Anglo-Saxonoid upper-middle master-race who all "work in publishing", or, for variation, are writers: struggling, of course. (Is there any other kind?)
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In a nutshell, some bloke and some woman want to have sex, but they can't because she works in publishing, and he's trying to get his manuscript published, and, well, in point of fact there's no decent reason why they can't groin-clap till they run dry, but the point is that they don't. They have small defeats and minor triumphs and then, one day, they wander across Waterloo Bridge at 5AM as the sun's coming up, look into each other's eyes and just know. You get me?PICK A BOROUGH
Some boroughs are taken. Iain Sinclair has nabbed Hackney. Monica Ali is having a stab at Tower Hamlets. Zadie Smith has pissed her pheromones all over Brent. Hanif Kureishi has Bromley sewn up. So, you're going to have to range a bit further afield, borough-wise. Redbridge is quite clear. You could probably set it on the Seven Kings high street – there's a big park nearby with football facilities, in case any of your characters play football. Or maybe something in Enfield? Wikipedia says: “Enfield Town had the world's first ever cash machine or ATM, which was installed at the branch of Barclays Bank and, on 27 June 1967, was opened by actor Reg Varney,” so that can probably come up at some point.NB:
No one should ever quote Dr Johnson's epigram on London, unless it is in parody. For example: “When one is tired of Welwyn Garden City, one is tired of life.” Or “When you are tired of London, try my wife.”
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