Left of the Bang. Claire Lowdon

      CLAIRE LOWDON

       Left of the Bang

       Copyright

      Fourth Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.4thestate.co.uk

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2015

      Copyright © Claire Lowdon 2015

      Cover photographs © Christoph Hetzmannseder / Getty Images (woman); Phil Portus Photography (train). Design © Kate Gaughran.

      Song lyrics quoted from: ‘Hey Jude’ by John Lennon and Paul McCartney (Sony/ATV); ‘The Nearness of You’, music by Hoagy Carmichael, lyrics by Ned Washington (Sony/ATV); ‘Only Girl (In The World)’, by Crystal Johnson, Mikkel S. Eriksen, Tor Erik Hermansen, Sandy Wilhelm (Sony/ATV); ‘S&M’, by Ester Dean, Mikkel S. Eriksen, Tor Erik Hermansen, Sandy Wilhelm (Sony/ATV); ‘We Are the Champions’, by Freddie Mercury (Sony/ATV); ‘You’re Not the Only Oyster in the Stew’, music by Harold Spina, lyrics by Johnny Burke (Warner/Chappell Music)

      Claire Lowdon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

      Source ISBN: 9780008102166

      Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 9780008102180

      Version: 2016-03-15

       Praise for Left of the Bang

      ‘Clear-eyed, audacious and disarmingly honest’ William Boyd

      ‘A disarming and affecting debut … Lowdon has an acute ability to paint exquisite pictures of ordinary life and capture what is extraordinary about it. It is social observation at its very best with characters that are both painfully honest but also hilarious in their satirical humour … Tamsin Jarvis will resonate long after the final page is turned’ Stylist, *****

      ‘In refreshingly flourish-free prose, Lowdon picks apart the cloaks that these millennial Londoners use to disguise their true selves, uncovering the startling disconnects underlying their friendships. The characters of this remarkable debut are neatly drawn and sharply skewered, the satirical observations crack like a whip and, most impressive of all, even the denouement arrives with the bang of the title’ Sunday Times

      ‘While [Lowdon’s] cast are hardly sympathetic, they’re too credible – and also too damaged – to be mere one-dimensional grotesques. The upshot is that they get uncomfortably under your skin, making Lowdon’s incendiary denouement real read-between-your-fingers stuff’ Daily Mail

      ‘In her deeply impressive and accomplished first novel, Left of the Bang, Claire Lowdon charts the lives of a group of twentysomethings in London with sharpness and precision, with humour and insight, and with generous helpings of humanity … There are shades of Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children and hints of Lena Dunham’s Girls, too, in the book’s depictions of sex and in how it so flawlessly captures these twentysomethings’ expectations of what the world owes them, and the disappointments that flow from these misapprehensions … The writing is razor-sharp, excruciating in its honesty … It takes stylistic risks with voice, tense and point of view. These pay off, absolutely, and tempted this reader, upon finishing, to begin again from page one … A piece of fiction that is flawless, beautifully paced and expertly judged. At age 30, Lowdon has the flair, polish and insight of a firmly established novelist … A gifted and perceptive writer’ Sarah Bannan, Irish Times

      ‘Write what you know, they say. Yet it’s a clever author who does just that and succeeds in offering insight. Claire Lowdon spins this tale about twentysomethings living in London as only someone who knows the drill well could do: it’s full of references to real pubs, nights out and the very particular emotional angst that comes from that post-university period in a thrilling but indifferent metropolis … The characters are well-drawn and sympathetic … Lowdon flits deftly between the perspective of each character … She takes time with the hopes and fears of each one, conjuring up a tension that builds painfully slowly … Lowdon uses sex to show the characters’ real selves, their hidden wants and desires … A smart and sober pronouncement on consequence’ Francesca Steele, The Times

      ‘Claire Lowdon’s serious-minded but nevertheless sparky debut novel can be seen as an extended rebuttal of the secret but abiding anxiety – especially among the youth – that everybody is having more, or better, sex than they are. What if, she asks, nobody is?… Lowdon is unobtrusively good on the non-glamour of London life … Left of the Bang is not a didactic novel, but its story certainly mutates from social comedy into something far more disturbing’ Alex Clark, Spectator

      ‘Claire Lowdon has written the definitive novel of a generation of Londoners. So involved did I become in their lives, so closely did I feel I knew them, that the note of disquiet that carries through the pages like the eerie mewl of a tuning fork absolutely levelled me when finally it reached its full glass-shattering resonance three-quarters of the way through’ Gavin Corbett

      ‘Attuned to the nuances of social interaction that lie above the threshold of awareness and elude articulation, Lowdon observes interpersonal relationships with a satirist’s sharp eye. Her narrator pierces façades and parses hybrid, often contradictory, cocktails of emotion with an efficiency reminiscent of Alan Hollinghurst’s early novels … Peeling the layers of her characters’ drives and desires demands a precision that, as the subtlety of these observations attests, Lowdon possesses’ Lindsay Gail Gibson, Times Literary Supplement

      ‘A startlingly assured debut, chronicling the lives of twentysomethings in contemporary London. (I read it in the same fevered excitement as I read Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children.) It’s a social commentary, a page-turner and it’s packed with beautiful sentences’ Sunday Business Post

      ‘All the way through what is essentially a realist novel about young Londoners runs an edge of tension, of suppressed panic. You await the explosion, never quite knowing what form it will take … Minor events all seem to take place in the shadow of the loaded gun we know must be about to go off, in “those vacuum-packed, suspended seconds” before the obscure but inevitable bang … The characters’ moral wranglings and the machinery of the plot spiral inexorably inwards, into the bedroom. It’s there that everything will eventually go bang’ Lidija Haas, Guardian

      ‘Lowdon has Evelyn Waugh’s willingness to inflict gruesome plot twists on her Bright Young Things’ Literary Review

      ‘A