Ten Storey Love Song

In Ten Storey Love Song, over the course of a single dynamite paragraph, we follow Bobby the Artist's rise to stardom and horrific drug psychosis, as Johnnie attempts to stop thieving and start pleasing Ellen in bed and forty-year-old truck driver Alan Blunt spends a worrisome amount of time patrolling the grounds of the local primary school. And when Bent Lewis, a famous art dealer and mover-shaker from London, appears, Bobby and friends are quickly swept away on a sweaty adventure of self-discovery, hedonism, and violence.

Ten Storey Love Song is a cutting but characteristically charismatic portrait of a deeply dysfunctional, creative, and drug-sodden world, delivered with great beauty and abandon.

In Ten Storey Love Song, over the course of a single dynamite paragraph, we follow Bobby the Artist's rise to stardom and horrific drug psychosis, as Johnnie attempts to stop thieving and start pleasing Ellen in bed and forty-year-old truck driver Alan Blunt spends a worrisome amount of time patrolling the grounds of the local primary school. And when Bent Lewis, a famous art dealer and mover-shaker from London, appears, Bobby and friends are quickly swept away on a sweaty adventure of self-discovery, hedonism, and violence.

Ten Storey Love Song is a cutting but characteristically charismatic portrait of a deeply dysfunctional, creative, and drug-sodden world, delivered with great beauty and abandon.

Publishers Weekly

A blistering, nearly stream-of-consciousness novel about the lives and loves of a group of misfits living in a British council estate, Milward's sophomore effort (after Apples) is a collage of druggy, grungy indulgences that is unexpectedly touching. Bobby the Artist paints bright, primitive canvases while tripping on acid. Georgie, his girlfriend and muse, is devoted to Bobby, but terrified of his lifestyle. Johnnie, the local drug dealer, has a hardcore pornography habit that's left him unable to satisfy the more gentle needs of his beautiful girlfriend, Ellen. Then there's middle-aged Allen Blunt, who spends a disturbing amount of time hanging around a local primary school. After Bobby's art is discovered and he begins a meteoric ride through the art world, Johnnie and Ellen forge a more profound bond, and Allen's life disintegrates after a run of bad (and violent) decisions. The narrative moves at a breakneck pace (the book is one very long paragraph), cleverly moving between characters and finding the right moments to pause for the rare tender moment. It's a high-wire act on a par with the better Irvine Welsh books. (Oct.)

Richard Milward was born in 1984 and recently graduated from Central St. Martins College with a fine arts degree. In 2007 his first novel, Apples, received huge critical acclaim. He lives in Middlesbrough, England, where he grew up.