Fallout audiobook

The reviews are divisive on this latest novel by Sadie Jones, and I can understand that. It is a very British book with a Hollywood ending, although, in her defense, the author created a plot that had a natural and organic conclusion. The ending was inevitable, so it wasn’t hamstrung. But, I agree that it could have been arranged in a less predictable outcome. The plot itself wasn’t the aim, though; it was the authentic and gimlet eye that Jones possesses when it comes to all things theater, and the romantic complications and stickiness that ensue—the theater as an incestuous and cloistered space. I was very involved in theater in my twenties, particularly one playhouse that performed cutting-edge productions, and what they called New Theater. I performed in plays that were written by local, regional, or other innovative playwrights that were just getting started. It was exciting, full of discoveries. And, it all came back to me when I read FALLOUT.The novel is an ensemble piece, focusing as it does on several different characters involved in theater, primarily in 1970s London. Luke Kanowski is from the poorer provinces, with a sad past. His mother is contained in a hospital for the mentally ill, and his father tries to overlook it, mostly with his head in the sand. Luke has talent, is writing plays, and is eager to test his ambitions in London. He meets Paul Driscoll, who is a talented producer, and Leigh Radley, a student. Eventually they bond together and start a theater company on a shoestring. The company they form is a passionate start-up, and a prelude to later buying space for a theater. The members are jacks-of-all-trades, doing everything they can to get it off the ground. Financial matters, building renovation, set design, and play production is done democratically, while Luke continues to write plays on the side (that he isn’t ready to share). As the three become closer, love and romance walk a tightrope. These triangulations were so common, in my experience, especially as theater becomes your life 24/7. However, in this case, Paul and Leigh clearly become a solid couple.Intertwined with this narrative is the story of Nina Jacobs, an aspiring actress with a domineering, meddling mother, who eventually introduces her to a theater producer, Tony Moore, who has lots of posh connections. Tony is a chilling, enigmatic figure, and Jones’s development of him was unnerving and formidable. Although feminism stakes a claim in the 70’s, Nina is subsumed in in a passive role, a second to the man who controls her. She is beautiful, damaged, and starving for the spotlight. She has a fragile but alluring presence on stage, which captures Luke’s hungry heart.Jones has a gift for dialogue, which is good, as this book has a considerable amount of it, and she keeps the pace and intimacy sharp and vibrating. Her characters are supple, fully dimensional, so if you are a lover of character-driven books, you'll be delighted. Moreover, the author conveys the contradictory ambiance of the theater métier, the alternating lather and lassitude. I wouldn't recommend this book for a mass audience--it is going to appeal more to readers with some insider experience of theater. I am not speaking of commercial theater, either, but rather the more incipient art houses that are both fertile and hopeful, but also vulnerable to fallout.“Paul, Luke, Leigh…text-cut and set-built in a frenzy of broken deadlines, late nights, and long mornings…Its successes inspired him, its failures provided counterpoints. In any gap, with any opportunity, he wrote, controlling his own work as he could not control his collaboration.”

In 1971, Luke Kanowski leaves the small town of Seston for London with a few bags of his possessions, including his record player and notebooks. A long-time theatre appreciator who's never seen a play, it takes a chance encounter with two people about his own age, Paul Driscoll and Leigh Radley, to motivate him into quitting his clerk job and leaving his parents behind to embark on his own life. His mother has been locked up in the mental asylum in Seston since Luke was five; he visits her often and resents his father, a Polish migrant who once flew fighter planes in World War II, for never seeing her or talking to her. He takes the train to London and calls the one person he knows there: Paul.Paul is not much past twenty but doesn't want to be the engineer his father pushed him to be. He wants to be a producer. Now with Luke on side, a plan begins to take shape and a fledgling theatre company arises. With several others, they form Graft, a small, artsy theatre above a pub. When handsome, charming Luke sleeps with the stage manager and then doesn't talk to her again, she leaves and they hire Leigh. The same spark of familiarity, connection and desire that was there when they first met is still alive, but Luke is taking the admonishment of not sleeping with the stage manager to heart, and steps back. Paul fills the gap, and after a while of dating him Leigh moves in to their flat and the three settle into a comfortable rhythm.Also in London is Nina, a young actress trying to break in. Raised mostly by her absent (and unknown) father's sister, her mother has been the dominant presence in her life. An actress who didn't want the burden of raising a child she didn't want, Marianne is selfish and egotistical. All Nina has ever wanted is her mother's love and approval; she'll do anything and become anything to make her mother happy. That's how she finds herself going to drama school, even though she's so shy, and how she became a shell of a person easily sculpted by anyone dominant and confident enough to take on the task. Which is what happens when she meets Tony Moore, a producer and one of her mother's young ex-lovers. Tony arranges her, dresses her and trains her like something between a doll and a pet. Nina hides so deeply behind a blank - appeasing and pleasing - mask that it's not long before any vestige of an individual person able to break free and create a life for herself is gone.It's at the performance of In Custody, a heavy play in which Nina stars, that Luke first really sees her. Barefoot, blind-folded and gagged, she comes onto the stage after an intense, dark opening in which the sounds of heavy doors opening and slamming shut can be heard. The experienced is terrifying for Luke, whose mother has been locked up for so long; when he sees vulnerable Nina, when her face is bared to him, he sees a frightened young woman who needs to be freed. It is Luke's all-consuming love for Nina, and the affair they embark upon, that ruins old friendships and nearly scuttles his just-blooming career as a playwright. Fallout is a coming-of-age novel for both Luke and Nina, a vividly-real, intimate look into what drives us, what shapes us and what love can cost us.This might very well be my favourite Sadie Jones novel to date, although I can't really say that because I really do like all her novels quite a lot and the ones I've read so far have all been quite different (I haven't yet read Small Wars; really must!). There is something holding me back from full-out loving her books, but for the first half-ish of Fallout I was definitely in the "love" zone. My copy is an uncorrected proof (an ARC), which meant it had lots of typos, nothing major, but it did also have a slightly unpolished feel to it. The prose was, at times, a bit awkward or unclear, the punctuation so technically incorrect that the emphasis or meaning of a sentence was distorted or lost, rendering some parts unnecessarily clumsy, like you've stumbled on an uneven floor. Again, hard to know if the punctuation was going to be fixed or whether this is the style she's developed, but the control over commas versus semicolons or even periods was sloppy. The comma isn't the "new" semicolon; they affect a sentence quite differently. Misuse either one and you ruin the rhythm of your words and disrupt the flow. You can be "experimental" with punctuation, but you can also create an annoyingly disjointed mess if you don't do it well.This is a story about people, about Luke and Nina, Paul and Leigh, about relationships, love, the battle scars in our relationships and the mistakes we make - and sometimes learn from. The characters are real, believable, familiar. The most interesting and confronting of them all was Nina, someone you pity and feel infinitely sorry for, but whom you can't respect. She lacks will, she lacks grit, she lacks perspective. She is a product of her mother's critique and Tony's homoerotic desires (for instance, her mother keeps her skinny because chunky girls don't get hired; Tony keeps her skinny because he likes her to look like a boy). The arrival of Luke in her life, someone she feels instantly drawn and attracted to in the same way he does with her, presents an opportunity: a chance to take control of her life, figure out who she is and what she wants, and be fulfilled and happy. But Nina has a diseased soul. Theirs is a love affair that begins with such hope and promise - you truly, truly want them both to be happy, and free, and together - that soon becomes something poisonous and even destructive. I sometimes hear, in movies maybe, people say that they're with the right person for the wrong reasons, or the wrong person for the right reasons, or some variation on that theme. There was a touch of that here. What I loved about it was how truthful, honest and messy it all was. Jones has a real knack for capturing ordinary, middle-class people in all their glorious strengths and flaws, and letting events play out naturally. While I did find that there was a slight sense of an author-creator (god-figure) manoeuvring pieces into place (it's the way she writes), once there the characters took over, their personalities guiding events and their ultimate fallout.The star of the story was the setting and era itself: the backdrop for the fallout of relationships. London in the late 60s and early 70s is a place on the cusp, a place discovering love and life and excitement. A place still being held back by the tight grip of tradition and society but increasingly stretching its wings. Theatre is prominent, and popular. New bands and music rock the airwaves - which people actually listen to. It incorporates women's lib but nothing overtly political or radical. This is a story set in the hearts of its characters, rather than their heads. While there, I felt like I was there. I could picture things quite well thanks to all the British telly I've watched over my lifetime, and the flavour of their speech really helps catapult you there. Eminently readable but not exactly pleasurable, Fallout had me wrapped up in the characters so that I was going to bed thinking about them, however disquieting and somehow off the story and the writing was at times.My thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book via TLC Book Tours.

Rakkauskertomus, joka onnistui välttämään romanttisesta rakkaudesta kertomisen sudenkuopat ja kliseet. Iso, traaginen, tunteikas, todenmukainen. Nautin tämän lukemisesta, oli helppo upota 1970-luvun Lontooseen ja hahmoihin, vaikka osa heistä olikin aika sietämättömiä — ehkä siinä juuri piilikin yksi kirjan viehätys ja realistisuus, ihmisissä joissa on useita puolia, helppoja pitää ja mahdottomia sietää.Kirjan nimi on muuten aivan kauhea suomeksi. Meinasi sen takia jäädä hyllyyn. Onneksi ei jäänyt!

Fallout is the story of four young people trying to make it in the world of experimental theatre in 1970s London. In a chance meeting in his Lincolnshire village, Luke Kanowski meets the fiery Leigh Radley and Paul Driscoll on their way to meet a playwright. Its the impetus that Luke needs to escape his dull life in an office job and run away to London and immerse himself in the theatre world. He's leaving behind a mother who has been in an asylum nearly all his life, and a father who is slowly drinking himself to death. Luke and Paul set up their own theatre company called Graft, while Luke secretly writes plays at night and Leigh works as a stage manager to pay the bills.Luke and Paul are strongly attracted to Leigh, but its Paul she chooses when Luke rebuffs her.Running parallel is the story of Nina Jacobs, a budding actress whose life will intersect with the other three in a dramatic way. She's grown up with a mother who is a monster - a fading narcissistic actress who is now pinning her hopes on her daughter. A critical step is marrying her off to the successful and influential but cruel Tony Moore.When Luke's first play is critically acclaimed, its seems natural that Paul and his new theatre company will produce his second offering. But Luke has become entangled with Nina and the liaison will have huge ramifications for all of them.There are so many things to love about this book. The characterisation is brilliant. Luke, Nina, Leigh and Paul are all convincingly portrayed and always consistent. Luke is emotionally stunted as a result of his neglected upbringing and the way he clings to Paul and Leigh in the flat they share as his replacement family is touching and believable. He beds lots of women but is unable to have a fulfilling relationship and the reader's sympathy is with him all the way.I read an interview with Sadie Jones talking about the character of Nina and how she created in Nina the kind of woman she really hates. But I felt sorry for Nina because her mother was so dreadful and even at her worst, I could not help but see what a tortured soul she is.The period is brilliantly evoked, from the walks through dark streets during the power cuts, to the fears that the bomb has been dropped, the grimness of 1970s London is painted very subtly. Jones does well to drop in these details without straining, which I find a problem in some historical fiction. You can almost smell the beer wafting up the stairs of the pub theatre.And there's some outstanding writing - Luke seducing the au pair at a party, 'and his thoughts were reduced gratefully to the heated maths of getting inside her clothes, taking up all of him in blessed focus' and overcome with desire 'burning and aching within and without from her imprint'.The plot is not complex but evolves from the distinct failings of the characters and their obsessions. The climax and ending are really satisfying for this reason.And that reminds me of an article I read recently on writing tips from Booker Prize winners. The one that stayed in my mind was from Arundhati Roy, the winner in 1997 for The God of Small Things.She said “…the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets....They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen...You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t."This is the best book I've read this year and I've already added Sadie Jones' other books to my birthday wish list.

Very cool book about a man searching for what he really wants to do in the world of theater. His clumsy way in life makes him suddenly end up in London with people he hardly knows and he trails after them trying to make a life for himself and follow this passion he has for plays and writing and the drama world. Sympathetic character ,as we all at some time wander looking for where we fit in and how we can follow our dreams.

Lättsmält och bra levererat!

Close EncountersThe novel opens in 1975, with an Englishman in New York. We learn that he is not wanted at rehearsal, so he has something to do with the theater. We also learn that his is thinking about a woman, wondering if she will show up. Who is he? Who is she? And will they indeed meet? The track record of the book makes this unlikely, since it is constructed around a series of near misses.It immediately goes back to 1961, showing parallel glimpses from the lives of two pre-teen children. Lucasz Kanowski, son of a former Polish pilot with the RAF, springs his mother out of mental hospital for a trip to the National Gallery in London. Nina Hollings also visits the gallery with her mother. She and Lucasz cross, but do not meet. There will be a number of other near misses in the next 80 pages, as Nina follows the example of her actress mother and goes to drama school, and Luke (now anglicized) takes various jobs, including a stint as garbage collector, to pursue his dream of becoming a playwright.It is obvious that Luke is the man in New York. But is Nina the woman? That is more difficult, because Luke has known many women in his life, mostly in brief encounters. But just occasionally some woman affects him differently: Luke needed the drug of sex, not that, not the tiny sharp thing he felt last night with [...], the prospect of raw, sweet kindness. He didn't recognize it; it couldn't draw him. And of course there are many other people who enter the story, principally a couple, Paul and Leigh, who stop him one rainy night in his hometown to ask directions and remain his friends for years. Before long, Paul and Luke will be roommates, working together on a fledgling theater company above a pub in the City of London. And, as their various careers expand, so do their circle of friends.As a theater professional myself, and former Londoner, I admire Sadie Jones' grasp of the theatrical world, especially on the foothills of success. Almost all of this rang totally true; I say "almost" only because I had difficulty believing Nina's transition from shy ingenue of modest talent to major star, and thence to the woman she would eventually become, although she was completely real in each individual phase. Even more than that, I admire Jones' handling of romance. She seems to make a specialty of people who love Person A but nonetheless make a life with Person B: eternal triangles whose conflicts are mostly hidden. And she is so good at portraying a young man's infatuation with a married woman that I can't believe she has not been there herself.So who, if anyone, does Luke see in New York? It matters, of course, but the real interest is in the journey, the combination of talent and crassness, ideals pursued and occasionally compromised, the moral underpinning that is palpable but by no means simplistic, love and the destruction of love, and Sadie Jones' constant ability to keep her readers on their toes.

I picked this book out mainly for the cover from my local library. I hadn't heard of it nor had I read any of the author's previous novels. I'm really glad that I took the chance since this was the best book of the three that I chose that day."Fallout" is a very well-written story about youth and the challenges of making your way in life. Three young people who met randomly wind up becoming roommates and business partners. They struggle to make their mark in the world of London theater in the 1970's. The background of each is as different as the individuals, and it all adds up to create give and take in their relationships with each other. Their successes come at a price with each suffering loss in some way. I found it to be a complex story and very pleasurable to read. I thought the workings of the writing and theater production were very interesting as was the time period. All together, it was a fascinating story that was a pleasant surprise.

I really enjoyed this book, maybe a bit predictable, but written really well and I loved the relationship between Leigh, Luke and Paul. It really captured the early 70s. I despised Nina's controlling mum and then her husband who has his own secrets. 4.5 stars for me

Another Dollar Tree find, and I enjoyed it, although it wasn't perfect. I think she's a wonderful wordsmith. Very near the beginning, she describes Luke's outside life while he works at the paper mill - all his bookreading; 'he read anything, everything', his writing of poems and plays, his 'intense joy of blissful escape', 'he was a scientist, he could travel.' Loved this - totally was there as she described this. Another example is a nearly run-on sentence describing Luke and girls that was pretty brilliant. I wasn't thrilled with the way he ran thru women (that we never really know), his choice of who to fall in love with was a woman, although talented, who I found to be pretty stupid, and he husband was pretty predictably unlikable. The ending's pretty easy to figure out, but that's OK, as that's how I wanted it to be. I do recommend this book.

From a slow and frustrating start, this built up to a startlingly powerful story. I loved it. So much time and energy is invested in the central characters that as time goes by you get a real sense of connection with them, and nostalgia as the novel draws to its close and characters reflect on the past. The writing is intelligent, literary enough but not obstructively so, and the evocation of 1970s theatre was impressive. I'm not sure why it's called "Fallout", but I'm sure there must be a good reason I missed. I would have called it "The Randiest Binman in Bayswater", but of course that would have robbed it of the gravitas that it richly deserves.

** spoiler alert ** En verdad me dejo sorprendido, pensé que sería un historia simple y termino cambiando todo, las reuniones, le mundo del teatro, lo raro pero atractivo de Lucke, ame a Leigh y por dios Nina es horrible, no la tolero y me sigue frustrando su actitud tan infantil.Me quedo con una gran historia llena de pasión, de ambición, de amistades, fiestas y mucho teatro. El hecho de anhelar algo y luego no saber qué hacer con ello me dejo impactado, como las personas rotas muchas veces no necesitan de alguien que las cure y sobre todo que el amor muchas veces solo es una confusión de sentimientos...

"No hubo amanecer para ellos. El sol salió y se hizo de día, pero el amor que sentían, como un ser mortal, se había ajado y agonizaba".Una historia de amor poco convencional, la búsqueda de los sueños, amistad, traición; un abanico de emociones y sentimientos que giran en torno al teatro y no te dejan indiferente cuando se baja el telón.

I think I found this book at a garage sale. The back of the book does it no justice. This book followed four characters and used them all to describe each other. The specific focus on Luke and Nina created a juxtaposition between the two that helped describe and illustrate their characters. The story felt a little long and drawn out, but it was a unique and interesting story.

Intense story. Ease and fight of love and friedship. Beauty as such.