GB84 [Paperback]

David PEACE (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Faber and Faber; First Edition edition (2004)
• ASIN: B000S5SJ6Y
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Best to discover the mood of the times, January 2, 2006

By 

John Barkley (Ossett, West Yorkshire, U.K.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gb84 (Paperback)

I was born during the miners' strike and have spent most of my life in Ossett, where Peace originates from. The book was very interesting just to learn about the events as they unfolded and the mood of the coalfields. Most young people are now quite poorly informed of the strike, especially in areas that actually have recovered like this fine town.

At times, the language conveys feelings of anger, frustration and despair wonderfully. The main characters are:
Terry - an N.U.M. official
"The Jew" - an anti-strike journalist with links to organised crime
Neil - taxi driver for "The Jew"
"The Mechanic" - a mysterious criminal, who sometimes does work for British national security
Martin and Peter - two pickets from Thurcroft colliery at the southern edge of Yorkshire, close to strike-breaking Nottinghamshire

It's good to get a broad range of views. The back of the book reads "The miners' strike. The government against the people." This suggested to me that the book was likely to be a pro-strike view. Seeing as it suggests that the government employed gangsters to help break the strike, this would seem to be true, although there were parts of the book when I did forget this. Some accounts of violence against working miners were written in such a way that I'm sure Peace was appalled by them - the two most notorious being the beating of a man in his home in Castleford and the murder of a taxi driver who escorted a miner to work.

There were some things that annoyed me, though. One big thing is that Peace likes to write like, "Neil did this. Neil did that. Neil gave up. Neil went home. etc. etc." He certainly doesn't like pronouns, which is a shame. Also, the whole strand that involved The Mechanic was a bit difficult to figure out. As you read the book, you constantly switch between the different perspectives and that strand seems very detached from the rest of it.

I must say, I certainly didn't see the end part with Neil and the Jew coming!

Peace seems to have done a lot of research for it, as seen in his large bibliography. One odd thing is that it often refers to Manton Colliery and always puts it in South Yorkshire. However, on consulting a map, I found that this pit was to the east of Worksop and was definitely in Nottinghamshire. I'm not sure why he made such a big thing of it!

The last thing to say is that those who know nothing of the strike may find it hard to understand. He often refers to trade unions by their initials, yet some of these unions don't even exist anymore. The National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Servicemen was very important to the strike, yet the average twenty-year old isn't going to know what "NACODS" means! He only mentions once - right at the start - that twenty pits and twenty thousand jobs were at stake. Many readers will probably forget this absolutely crucial bit of information after a while.