Jimmy has reached a crossroads in his life. After many months of drifting and drinking his way around Europe he finds himself at the sharp edge of the empire, incarcerated in Seven Towers, a notorious hilltop prison, peering into the abyss. Jimmy has always been an outsider, but is now a fully-fledged alien, who doesn't understand the language or customs of the other inmates, just that their crimes range from shoplifting and drug addiction to murder and rape. But what exactly is the nature of Jimmy's offence? And what is the dark secret that haunts his every move? Seven Towers is another name for Hell: a place where squalor and fear are endemic and imagination is the only means of escape. The characters Jimmy meets inside push his sanity to the brink: the silent, pyjama-clad Papa with his knitting needle, the cheerful killer and mutilator known as the Butcher, the gentle Franco and the cruel Homer, and Dumb Dumb, a deaf mute building a better world out of matchsticks. A visceral, violent, compelling novel, it is also a moving testament to the human spirit and its ability - against the odds - to hold on to hope and the idea of love..
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
John King is the author of five previous novels: The Football Factory, Headhunters, England Away, Human Punk and White Trash. He lives in London.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
A Disaster,
By A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Prison House (Hardcover)
I absolutely loved King's "football trilogy" (The Football Factory, Headhunters, England Away), and thought "Human Punk" was an excellent change of direction. However, his last book, "White Trash", was an utter disaster, and it was with some trepidation that I picked this one up. Regrettably, after slogging through 1/3 of the book I just couldn't be bothered to continue and have set it aside for the foreseeable future. The problem isn't the subject matter (a young British man imprisoned, apparently under dubious circumstances in an unspecified Mediterranean country, perhaps Greece), but the execution. The prison novel/film is a well-established genre, and in the first third of the book, King brings nothing new to it. There's the grim living conditions, the threat of violence, the kooky fellow prisoners, nasty warders, and balancing act between boredom and fear. In short, all the usual trappings of a prison story. Interwoven with the description of daily life are the prisoner's rambling memories of his childhood and various global travels. These extended stream of consciousness monologues may well appeal to fans of Burroughs, Bukowski, et al, but as I'm not particularly a fan of that style, they didn't work for me. In any event, the first 1/3 of the book dragged so badly that it'll be a long time before I return to it.
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