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@K.Coo
I've just finished The Balloonist (from recommendations in this thread) and really liked it, didn't like Gustav very much.
And Stars and Bars by William Boyd- Any Human Heart is one of my most favourite ever books and Stars and Bars is really really good- subtle and funny although set in about 1983, and I found it really hard to shake off the feeling that it was the 60s.
Also A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks, reminded me of Saturday (McKewan) a lot but much much better- the blurb on the back of the book says it's the Circle Line which ties the characters together; the first chapter makes it quite clear that it's really a dinner party, but the recurring motif is a cyclist riding on the pavement without lights who keeps whizzing past various characters throughout the book, and at the end one of the characters "finds a bicyclist with no lights coming towards him through the box, going against not one but two red trafffic signals, balancing his almost-static bicycle with smart pedal work as he forded through the twin stream of green-lit cars and lorries, then, as death brushed either shoulder, fishing a mobile phone from his pocket and initiatig a call. While the traffic braked and swerved round him, he put both feet down so he could shake his spare fist more vehemently against them."
Smart pedal work? Nice way of saying trackstanding. Maybe I should put this in Spotted, could be someone on here..