2000 Tunes edition by Karl Drinkwater Literature Fiction eBooks
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“He started to sketch a face. A random face. With dark eyes and hair. Just any old face. He made the chin too small and drew over it, but then it looked like a double chin. That wasn’t appropriate for...
Ah. He had been drawing Sam.”
Mark Hopton’s an outsider obsessed with Manchester music. He knows the dates, facts, band members, lyrics, histories and places. He can join them in complicated webs of association because he knows the secret everything’s connected. Music’s his escape into a better world.
Oh man, he needs that escape. His dad’s in prison, his psycho brother’s only one step away, and they’re twisting his melons trying to make him risk his freedom by smuggling drugs. It ain’t easy saying no when family and their shady contacts can be bone-breakingly persuasive. Heaven knows he’s miserable now.
The summer sun does bring one ray of light he secretly admires Samantha, a beautiful Welsh girl at work. Watching her is like listening to music, it strengthens him, she’s his wonderwall of true faith. He’s happy with that. Love is fool’s gold.
Meanwhile, Samantha’s been caught up in a hedonistic lifestyle of cigarettes and alcohol with the 24 hour party people but now she’s had it up to here with Mancunians. Cheaters, weirdos and two-faced scummers, the lot of ’em. When the drugs don’t work it’s time to grow up but no-one’s going to take her for granted again. Don’t look back in anger? Screw that. She’s never been one to walk away.
2000 Tunes is a meditation on life, family, friends, growing up, and following your dreams.
2000 Tunes edition by Karl Drinkwater Literature Fiction eBooks
This is highly over written. Two thirds of it should be scrapped. You want to yell at the author to get on with it. There is no dramatic tension. Bigger is definitely not better in this case. I was so bored by a third of the way through that I quit.Product details
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2000 Tunes edition by Karl Drinkwater Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
All good books have a magic moment - not the one that grabs you, that's the job of covers and blurbs, but the moment that hooks you in and turns a 1 chapter fling into a full-on commitment. 2000 Tunes - Karl Drinkwater's lovesong to Manchester, music and the madness of families - did that with a simple line about Manchester's iconic music venue The Hacienda "It had been a surprisingly small place compared to its size in his memory." It was like someone had defined far too many of my conversations since 1982.
When he followed that with a description of Manchester that captured the city's accent and its crazy contradictions and echoed the musical beat that runs through the novel - "Carrier bags and kicked-in teeth, short skirts in winter, tall tales with bitter, a brew and a lager, shaved heads and shopping on red brick and grit, endless suburb houses, long roads and alleys, gorillas and galleries, Salford scallies" - this music fan's soul was caught.
Drinkwater positions the novel as being about music - the famous Madchester sound - and it is, but it is much more than that. This is a novel about families and how they trap, or save, you; it's also about relationships and the inarticulate nature of love. Music-obsessed Mark Hopton and Welsh Valley girl-made-good Samantha are trying to create lives that will at least let them glimpse the stars - Drinkwater lets them stumble and doesn't accept cliched pathways, his characters are far too real for that.
I couldn't put it down, I want to know what happens next - if there really is a light that never goes out...
I have a penchant for empathetic literature that casts outsiders as gentle heroes - and gangly protagonist Mark Hopton is a perfect example of such a character.
When we first meet Mark he seems to jar with the world around him, but as Drinkwater peels away the layers of Mark's character, we get to know someone who is as caring and sensitive as he is socially awkward. It is impossible not to warm to him - and it's heartwarming to watch his workmates follow suit.
At first, anything developing between Mark and Sam seems unlikely. But, again, Sam develops before us on the page - and the more we get to witness her fragility, the more obvious it becomes that Mark is just the sort of someone who could make her happy.
As well as Mark and Sam, there are two other important characters in this book - music and Manchester - and Drinkwater does nostalgic justice to them both. It was like being back in the Manchester of my teens!
After enjoying Cold Fusion 2000 so much I was looking forward to Drinkwater's next book and this didn't disappoint. It has everything I have come to expect from Drinkwater's writing. Dialogue that nails the metre and manic exuberance of the Manc tongue. Perfectly realised rudderless 20-somethings stuck in empty jobs and flats. A dash of magic realism in the form of a 'Kathy Burke impersonator in the flesh'. The obligatory dig at Stretford 'Crammed by day, dead by night. Morrisey grew up in Stretford. No wonder he was miserable'.
Manchester music holds this book together as it holds Mark's life together. But dig deeper into this seeming love letter to the Manchester music scene and starts to read like an obituary. All the good music gone. The Hacienda closed. The Conti faded, captured here before the lights go out for the last time a year later.
Mark makes endless connections between the music he loves 'It's like a pattern for me. It's all for me, it's all connected'. But these patterns form a web as sticky as that woven by his family that fixes him in the past so he can't see the future. He is ' Lost in music' and only when he realises that going over the connections is as futile as repainting double yellow lines on a transient skin of a city that doesn't care can he move on. Only then can he live the words of one of the bands he loves 'The past was yours but the future's mine'.
One thing about Karl Drinkwater is that he never disappoints and 2000 Tunes is Classic Karl. Reading this well-written and detailed novel we are drawn into a world in Manchester, UK that is certainly new to me. Music references, personal and work relationships mixed with various levels of lifestyles-this book has it all. I embraced it fully. I was especially taken with the characters Mark and Sam. Mark uses his vast knowledge of the local music scene to emotionally carry him through the rough times. I liked the way Mark gradually started changing his appearance to change his life and Sam had a few changes on the go also. Did their story end in the way I hoped it would? You'll have to read 2000 Tunes to find out! Our author doesn't pander to the expected. Expect surprises. 2000 Tunes is a novel whose characters and situations will stay with you long after you have finished reading it.
This book was okay. I really liked all of the musical mentions because music is something that moves me and that I tend to relate to. I think the author did a great job describing the characters, scenes, and situations that were taking place. The best part of the novel is how the main male character overcame some demons and was able to move on from unhealthy relationships and into a life that was right and so much better. It's also cute how the two main characters save each other in different ways!
On the flip side, however, this book was extremely long and boring in some spots. At times, way too much detail was given. In a sense, I felt like it was a movie because every little thing could be seen, but I really think it was unnecessary altogether. There were also a few scenes that left me uncomfortable reading about, but thankfully are short lived.
This is highly over written. Two thirds of it should be scrapped. You want to yell at the author to get on with it. There is no dramatic tension. Bigger is definitely not better in this case. I was so bored by a third of the way through that I quit.
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