This is one of the funniest books I've read since Keith Waterhouse's Billy Liar and, in truth, the anti-hero of this, Nicholls' first novel, does share some of young Liar's sexual frustrations as he gropes his way through, in this case, life at uni.
Nicholls has recently achieved celebrity status with his latest novel, One Day, which, apart from selling several million copies, has just been filmed starring Ann Hathaway (The one without the cottage).
What has all this got to do with Jazz? I hear you ask.
Nothing 'cept a leading character in Starter for Ten has two dogs - Mingus and Coltrane.
This got me to wonder about other jazz inspired fictional names.
John Connolly's stories feature a private eye called Charlie Parker and I seem to recall reading/reading of a novel where all of the characters were named after jazz musicians.
Any more?
Lance.
How about Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick, the Nottingham policeman invented by John Harvey? He has four cats called Dizzy, Miles, Pepper and Bud.
ReplyDeleteI'm on a roll tonight. I remembered a book by Sue Grafton which had a Jazz reference but I had to resort to Google to discover which one it was - "B is for Burglar" which features Mingus a large Persian cat, "Mingus. After the jazz pianist." Oh well we can't have everything. I know he played piano but it was hardly what he was famous for.
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