Author: Mark Bowles

Publisher: Galley Beggar

Paperback

One of our books of the year 2024!

Emz says: Mark Bowles All My Precious Madness prompts questions such as: what (or who) is the sequel to the Angry Young Man? The answer, judging from this book, is the Angrier Old Man. Bowles narrator sits in a cafe trying to write a memoir about his father. Instead, he is relentlessly distracted by a regular who takes loud phone calls about value propositions and other infuriating business jargon. The narrator meanwhile looks back on his life as a working-class northerner who made it to Oxford, the illness that left a void in his life and his complicated relationship with his father. Just like Thomas Bernhards narrators have a deep hatred for Austria, Bowles seething monologue is a rejection of English culture in favour of the continent. Bonus rec also read this year: Concrete by Thomas Bernhard – anger, despair, hilarity, a genius with form.