Here Comes the Nice
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Here Comes the Nice
by Jeremy Reed
Publication Date: 16th Nov, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-907681-12-7
Paperback, 294 pages
‘Wanna take time out?’ the Face suggested non-commitally, as though he was really speaking to someone over the boy’s bony shoulder.
‘You’re joshed up delish,’ the boy replied. ‘Mother’s a stretcher case on the rack today. You dining out ajax?’
The Face came from out of nowhere – a self-regarding stylist like a rogue gene triggering the cultural acceleration of the sixties. The Stones had the notoriety, but the Face had the style. Cruising the Dilly or up on blues in Ham Yard, the Face was it. The Stones may keep rolling, but true Faces never die.
Almost fifty years later, in an apocalyptic London whose urban maze is menaced by emotionally damaged veterans of a morally bankrupt war, Paul is researching the enigmatic designer John Stephen, Mod icon and inimitable king of Carnaby Street. When Paul experiences a time-slip, the two time-lines – present and sixties – begin to twist around each other like a DNA double helix. What is Paul’s true relationship to the Face? Can the Face still be alive and unchanged in present day London? If the Face is real, does Paul’s deepest identity lie in the present life he knows, or the lost past he dreams of?
From Jeremy Reed, Here Comes the Nice is novel as time-machine, taking the reader back to the raw early gigs of the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Small Faces, and behind the scenes to a secret that will make the sixties live forever – somewhere. Elegiac and thrilling, Here Comes the Nice is a paean to the unacknowledged power of the obsessive imagination.
About The Author
Jeremy Reed is a Jersey-born poet and novelist, dubbed by the Independent, “British poetry’s glam, spangly, shape-shifting answer to David Bowie”, and by Pete Doherty, “a legend”. Author of over fifty volumes of poetry (including Listening to Marc Almond, Quentin Crisp as Prime Minister and Patron Saint of Eye-Liner), fifteen novels (including Boy Caesar and The Grid), and numerous volumes of non-fiction, Reed is known for his extraordinary imaginative gifts, his characteristic use of language like experience freshly recorded on the nervous system, and his visionary mining of subject matter outside the range of his contemporaries. His biggest fans are J.G. Ballard, Pete Doherty and Bjork, who has called his work, “the most beautiful, outrageously brilliant poetry in the world.” Visit his website here, and read the full biography here.
What People Say
“Pop culture revivals and obsessive style nostalgia are extrapolated to an almost frightening degree in this speed-rush of music, drugs, and time-travel mysticism. … Reed’s portrayal of the 1960s—the clothes, the language, the sex, and the music—is surreal and perfect. He doesn’t shy from the queer side of mod culture and accurately portrays the legendary young bands as kids, both amateurish and brilliant. Either a critique of retro chic or its most extreme expression, this page-turner is a volume knob–turner as well. ”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Jeremy Reed’s talent is almost extraterrestrial in its brilliance. He is Rimbaud reconfigured as the Man Who Fell to Earth, a visitor from deep space whose time machine was designed by Lautreamont and de Sade and powered by the most exotic fuels imagination has ever devised.”
J.G. Ballard
“Jeremy Reed is a legend. What more can you fucking ask?”
Pete Doherty
Online Reviews