East of Islington

5/5
Gibson Square Fiction
When Sam Taylor first moved east of Islington in north London, she entered a strange parallel universe where her neighbours included a semi-naked opera singer who performed The Pirates of Penzance at midnight while dangling from the scaffolding. Soon her world was full of confirmed bachelors and desperately single men and women. Over the years she visited garden centres with ’60s starlets, attended dinner parties hosted by ageing women who saw stripping as a viable career, and met working girls and boys who thought they were ‘It’. Her encounters are described in bite-sized pieces and collected in this highly entertaining book. East of Islington is populated by the sorts of people you’ll recognise if you’ve ever set foot in the area: critics-cum-artists, Brazilian rappers and Japanese oboe players. But this is a must-read whether you’ve ever been east of Islington or not.
Paul Burston