North Face of Soho (Audio Download)

by Clive James (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"'His proses mixes together cleverness and clownishness, and achieves a fluency and a level of wit that makes his pages truly shimmer' Financial Times" --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Description
Taking us from Fleet Street to Clive James on TV, from Russian department stores to Paris fashion shows via fatherhood, some killer bees, and a satire starring Anne Robinson as Mrs Thatcher, "North Face of Soho" is the larger-than-life story of a life lived to the full. "It's not just that he writes a lot, but that he writes with intense perfectionism, and delivers his gags with honed elegance" - "Sunday Times". "One of the most rewarding aspects of this exuberant work is James' willingness to reveal the backstage mechanics of his professional life. This book is enormously entertaining" - "Sunday Telegraph". "In the case of many people who attempt an autobiography even a single volume is one too many. In the case of Clive James the four volumes now in existence are too few. If the final tally puts him up there with Marcel Proust, so much the better" - "FT Magazine". "I feel I know more about the author after reading it than I gleaned from all of his other books put together. This is a book about hard-earned self-knowledge. What makes it funny is quite how hard the self-knowledge was to earn" - William Leith, "Evening Standard". --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Audio Download
• Publisher: audible.com
• ASIN: B000RGULFQ
• Shipping Information: View shipping rates and policies
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reliable James, February 26, 2007

By	J. P. Ivins (Perth, Western Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: North Face of Soho (Unreliable Memoirs) (Hardcover)

It's a decade since I read the first instalment of these Memoirs but the contrast effect is strong nevertheless. I remember the first book was funny and well written but I don't remember it having much point. In fact that was the point: "...someone who had done nothing writing a book about how he had prepared himself for not doing it...". Reading the fourth volume is like being given sound advice from a much admired uncle: try to learn from your mistakes so you can do better next time. James illustrates this theme by stuffing up over and over again while his career somehow manages to assemble itself around him. Eventually he even manages to learn from his mistakes. There are dull moments, or at least moments that are dull if you neglected to have a literary career in London during the 1970s, but these are easy to plough through because you know it won't be long before Martin Amis walks into the next pub. On the whole I smiled a lot. Sometimes I laughed loud enough to frighten the chooks, and I cried on the last page right on cue. One thing I didn't do was put it down.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, December 7, 2006

By	mg69 (Melbourne) - See all my reviews

This review is from: North Face of Soho (Unreliable Memoirs) (Hardcover)

I approached the book with anticipation, having enjoyed "Unreliable Memoirs" (Volume One).This latest volume, which brings us up to James' post-Cambridge early career, is unbelievably tedious: solipsistic, self-absorbed, full of endless references to literary editors, TV producers, buddies from the London literary world - most of whom no-one has ever heard of, though the big names, like Martin Amis, get grovelling accolades. James tries to justify his frantic, over-achieving persona by suggesting that he is presenting a cautionary tale from which the willing reader can learn. Don't believe it. The book is unutterably boring, lacking the verbal wit we once enjoyed from this former media celebrity. He should have quit while he was ahead with the fatherless little boy from Kogarah riding his billycart down that hill.