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London can be as pitiless as it is bountiful. No one knows that better than Mia Taylor. From a gilded life of privilege to a shabby alternative health centre in London’s East End in the space of weeks. The violent tragedy that propels Mia east also pitches her unwittingly into a bigger history, a modern legend of migration and change.
Mia’s new life brings her into contact both with a kaleidoscope of characters who inhabit the extraordinary city of London and the burning issues that will mould its future. Politics and racism, corruption and betrayal, poverty and decadence, all smoulder side by side as the capital blazes into the new millennium.
Out of the ashes emerges Mia: a troubled, questing woman who hopes to find herself by going east.
Mia’s new life brings her into contact both with a kaleidoscope of characters who inhabit the extraordinary city of London and the burning issues that will mould its future. Politics and racism, corruption and betrayal, poverty and decadence, all smoulder side by side as the capital blazes into the new millennium.
Out of the ashes emerges Mia: a troubled, questing woman who hopes to find herself by going east.
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Reviews
A Dickensian Tale of Two Cities, both of which happen to be London
Brilliant - an absorbing and completely convincing portrait of drift and destiny in London today.
This novel excited me to the very end.
A portrait of London as it is now, this morning, this very minute, in all its splendour, ugliness and variety.
Powerful . . . d'Ancona has a real descriptive gift . . . The plotting is full of twists and surprises; the book goes like a train . . . A page-turner
I read every page of the book and found an enormous amount to praise and enjoy. The sweep of character and the broad scan of subject are very successful. It gripped me throughout.
He charts beautifully the daily tactics required to carry on living a shattered life . . . It is brave to allow a protagonist to hug her pain to herself so completely, and d'Ancona pulls it off
does for contemporary London what The Bonfire of Vanities did for 1980s New York. Going East is splendid. Once you start reading, you are unlikely to stop.
. . . there is a pleasing cinematic quality to his writing . . . d'Ancona is true to the bittersweet realities of today's East End and adds a vibrant literary sheen to what was once London's most benighted quarter.
GOING EAST is about loneliness, the dispossessed and the recuperative power of love. D'Ancona has put his finger on the pulse of contemporary society. He has put together an intriguing cocktail of thriller, satire and love story. The book throbs with cleverly plotted tension.