Please could you use the Publishers Weekly review of Beatniks from November 7 2002 - it is brilliant.

Thank you,

Marion Boyars Publishers

...It helps that at the time I bought it I was the same age as the main character and could identify too readily with her. However this is a great read, especially for those of us from the unhip provinces, or an interest in the beats, or anyone who has ever tried to be cool and interesting (which, in all honesty, is most of us).

The narrative rattles along absorbingly and there are many poignant moments and home truths along the way. Toby Litt writes a female character so well I felt slightly duped that he is a man.

And it is, actually, a very cool book!

Toby Litt is the Oliver Cromwell of Britain's so-called young puritans. This playful first collection mixes high and low culture into a Wagamama Raw Juice number one. I also like it because it contains a character called Brian who believes all advertising.

Toby Litt is considered to be, by many critics, the best english author of the new english (young) prose. And this book represents him in the best light that it can. This is the story about four boys the live and grow in the small town in England called Amplewick. It's the story of their growth, both physical, and pshychological, it's the story of the obsession with war, obsessions with fight, and most of all it is the story of broken ideals, of friendship raised in an unnatural circumstances, and last but but not the least, it is the story of lack of communication, and of effects that it can have on unprepared minds (and who could ever be prepared for such thing).
Written in two sepparate forms, of retospective monologue, and storyteling with spotlight on one of the main characters (spotlight changes as novel progresses), with excellent language skills, and nostalgic sidenote, mixed with fury which cannot be witheld inside himself (author has integrated himself in his character), this is indeed example of good literature.
Though maybe not so hard to understand as some of the recent alegoric novels, this book keeps his reader constantly on the seat, not with the story but more with the growing feeling of discomfort, and perverse anticipation of "what will happen next and why at all would I want to know that?"
Masterpiece of it's own, everyone should try to read it and to understand it. It is not just plain writting without anything behind the words which became very popular in modern literature. But deffinitely it is not a book for summer vacation, or a light break from work. It is a book that needs to be enjoyed upon.

For those who admire the style of the later Henry James, and enjoyed the final three "big" novels - The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and the Golden Bowl - this much shorter and lighter novel - almost a short story by James' standards - will be a very pleasant diversion.

Obviously adapted from his play without much attempt to disguise this fact, the novel is driven by the characters' sharp and often witty dialogue. The characters are well drawn, and the story is unusually straightforward for James. While there remain the usual elliptical phrases and circumlocutions we've come to expect in his later novels, these have been toned down in the interests of dramatic momentum and the book is actually an easy read.

While it is certainly not one of the great James novels, it is nevertheless recommended to those who enjoy reading this author.

The narrator of this story, Conrad Redman, is an aptly-named protagonist, since, after only a few pages, he's covered by a large quantity of blood - his own and his girlfriend's, when they're gunned down in a flashy London restaurant. Initially, this made me suspect a "Soho-genre" novel (the type written by some English novelists who see themselves as aspiring screenwriters.) Be that as it may (and probably Toby Litt does indeed have aspirations to become such a screenwriter since it appears that the screen rights to this novel have already been optioned) the book is worthy of more than just a writer's screen credit at the end of a movie.

Though reasonably well written, Corpsing seems to be sometimes too world weary and cynical. Conrad Redman's work involves creating trailers for satellite/digital companies, and he's in a rut where he's almost given up his dream of becoming a filmmaker. We first meet him when he's putting together a promotion for yet another Shark Week, making his trailers by splicing bits of film together, disregarding linearity in order to collage the best shots. And this is how Corpsing is narrated... sort of bitty and full of jump cuts, flashbacks, slow mo, stops and starts. Above all, the flash-backs-forwards of the bullet entries. Litt spares no bruising detail as he describes how Conrad and his girlfriend, Lily, are literally blown apart. But he also cleverly places his narrator into a situation that most of his readers will have fantasized about in one way or another. So, although Conrad may not always be very likeable, the reader cannot help but identify with him.

There's a certain amount of wit in Conrad's narration (Litt's writing), like Conrad admitting his shame at being shot by a bicycle courier in shockingly bright Lycra. However, there are faults too. Too many of the characters are lifeless - the notable exception being Lily, Conrad's dead actress girlfriend, who seems to get a far better role than many of the living. Unfortunately, good characterization is what this book needed, and in that respect Litt failed to fulfil. Otherwise, not a bad read.

Conrad Redman gets a call from his ex-girlfriend Lily Irish. On very short notice she wants to meet him at the ?Le Corbusier? restaurant. He can not resist and there the two of them sit, having supper. Enters a strange figure in the disguise of a bycicle messenger, pulls out a gun, kills Lily and sends Conrad to the hospital for six months. They catch the killer, but he will not talk. Conrad wants to find out who gave the orders for the shooting spree. Lily?s parents - Josephine and Robert ?The Mistake? - are of little help. Anne Marie, Conrad?s new girl friend, energetically marches along, but he soon tires of her.

While it is a fun story, the ending is less than satisfying. Some of the red herrings tend to be barracudas.