Political Gothic: David Peace does the miners’ strike
Andy Beckett, 23 September 2004
“Throughout, there is an intriguing tension between the book’s desire, approaching that of a Thomas Pynchon novel, to set wheels turning within wheels, to present a political world of infinite complexity and, ultimately, chaos, and its desire for order, both organisational and moral. Peace loves describing meetings. He lingers over the rituals of failing negotiations between the union and the government, the overlit rooms and bad coffee – the fatalistic cups of tea of his previous books replaced by something more jittery – and the pulling of levers in the strike and strike-breaking machines.”