Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

London, alcoholism and truth.

Jack Bick descends into a breakdown while a mysterious plume of smoke baffles London. I lost interest at a few points, but it definitely left a lasting impression. It's haunting, sad and a little confusing. In all, I'm glad I read it.

Plume is a fascinating and unique take on clashing egos. Journalist Jack Bick is struggling to control his alcoholism but an interview with reclusive cult novelist Oliver Pierse just might turn things around for him. But Pierse seems to know a whole lot more about Bick than he should and what is the mysterious column of smoke that has appeared at the edge of the city?

Plume is an edgy mix of satire and surrealism which doesn't always hit the mark but is never anything less that entertaining. Bick is a neurotic and entertaining narrator and never falls into the cliched alcoholic writer tropes as he might have.

It took me a while to get round to reading Plume but I'm glad I did. It's a sprawling narrative which takes in (and satirises) London psychogeography, post-millennial dystopia, addiction, media superficiality, and property development mania. Switching between the broad and the subtle, it takes on big subjects - the distinction between lies and truth, London myth-making, the co-dependence of wealth and poverty - much of which comes off. It can be very funny, and too clever by half, in its skewering of easy targets such as bars 'where tattooed artisans pulled plastic pints using pumps fashioned from the handlebars of Chopper bikes' or in making you laugh at lines like 'he's not dangerous, he knows Lauren Laverne'. It has its faults - I was never sure of the status of Jack Bick and narrator (how did someone so dysfunctional come to write this book?), its depiction of (East) London is much narrower than the map on Pierce's wall, the Plume/cockatoo metaphors didn't quite come off for me, and the whole technology/surveillance theme was a little overdone - but there is a verve and quality in the writing that keeps you reading to the end. Like the (deliberate) embodiment of a magazine article stretched to book length, it wants to have and eat its cake, but that's how London works I suppose.

This book was reviewed on Splice on June 17, 2019: https://www.thisissplice.co.uk/2019/06/17/the-big-smoke-will-wiles-plume.

Well that was a surprisingly fascinating journey. It’s amazing how compelling writing can be when one is drawn into someone else’s life.

The take on contemporary London is frightening, and sadly a lot of it is true. Thankfully there is also the almost dystopian aspect that Tamesis brings to the party, although it doesn’t take much imagination to envision a world where this is true (to be fair it is mostly true).

Jacks need to suppress reality is almost palpable. The portrayal of his alcoholism and downward spiral is so authentic that I can’t help liken it to Oliver Pierce’s portrayal of the mugging in Night Traffic. If it were to be portrayed as non-fiction I would certainly believe it.

Jack, from the start, acknowledges and even seems to accept that he is headed towards rock bottom, but does nothing to try and correct his path. Factors beyond his control however have different plans for him, and the journey we embark on, both retrospectively and played out over the following few days is captivating to say the least.

And then there is the Plume of course; ‘that was part of what made it impressive, the fact that it was so obviously distant yet so very prominent’. Much like the possibility of disaster within Jacks downward spiral, which of course the Need helps keep abstract, in the distance, anaesthetised, but still prominent.

Thanks NetGalley and HarperCollins UK for a review copy.

I read an excerpt and interview with the author in the Guardian a few months ago, and was sufficiently intrigued to read the rest of the book. It is slow to get going, but somehow you feel compelled to keep on reading. The story is told from the point of view of Jack Bick, an investigative journalist and alcoholic, whose career is slowly going down the pan. For me, the writing is at its best when dealing with his addiction and how it affects every area of his life. I found the rest of the book a bit disjointed; despite introducing several important issues (perhaps too many?) facing the modern world, I’m not sure the various parts of the narrative hang together very well, but the quality of the writing more than makes up for it. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy to review.

A book on human fallibility, our flimsy relationship with the truth, and our futile obsession with authenticity. An alcoholic journalist, unravelling and terrorised by hallucinations of a fiery plume engulfing London’s skyline, gets embroiled with the author of a (seemingly) non-fiction account of a mugging in East London and a Zuckerberg-like omniscient technology tycoon who owns a location-sharing app. The book’s portrayal of the narrator’s addiction, and consequent psychosis, is engrossing and engulfing - the sardonic self-destruction brought to mind Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels. In his moments of lucidity, the narrator and the author discuss the inauthenticity of London’s gentrification, the income inequality it exacerbates, and the role that mugging and fear could play in restoring some order - ‘The city needs fear. It keeps the balance, it stops the wrong sorts getting the upper hand. It stops the Mumfords taking over. And we’ve lost that.’ Only partially aware of their complicity and hypocrisy, they concoct a ludicrous experiment to recreate this fear. This obsession with authenticity also haunts the tech tycoon, who strives to find the truth in data, algorithms, and metrics. He is, unsurprisingly, not fully benevolent in a very Black Mirror manner.

This is the second dark, gritty novel based in modern day London that I have read in recent months- a sign of the times perhaps? Central to the plot is Jack- a journalist who’s life is spiralling out of control due to his addiction to alcohol. When he has the chance to do a make or break interview with a reclusive author, things look on the up- but it’s never that simple. A gritty book that had me hooked.

I was over the moon when I heard Will Wiles had written a new novel.
His first two books, Care of Wooden Floors and The Way Inn, were both instant favourites, despite being wildly different from each other.
The former was like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm written by Magnus Mills; the latter was pure surrealism, shifting from a satire about business conferences and hotel chains to something more akin to The Matrix or Christopher Nolan’s Inception.
So I wondered where on earth would Wiles go with book three. London, as it turns out, where we see a boozy magazine journalist slowly losing his grip, trapped in a dying industry while being swallowed up by modern city life.
It’s a relentless and suffocatingly gripping story that’s perfectly observed, sinister and yet also wildly witty. Wiles is a very talented writer who really ought to be more widely known. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.
Thanks to NetGalley and Fourth Estate for giving me the opportunity to read this brilliant book.

In the grand scheme of things this is a cautionary tale about how data can be manipulated. In both directions: good or bad but ultimately an invasion of privacy and a force that can impact your life and your perception of everything. At the same time it is a book about alcoholism and its devastating effect. And it's a book about London and in particular about London's real estate market and its impact on people and mobility.
While arguably a slow paced novel - the entire plot happens just over a few days, less than a week. But as strange as it may seem, for me, it was a very fast, urgent novel, inexorably moving toward a finish, toward closure.
I've enjoyed the writing style, it kept me intrigued, gripped, I just had to find out how's Jake going to end up. The author did a brilliant job in evoking the haze and gloom of the main character's frame of mind. He is just floating through life and fast approaching an end that's either going to be his undoing or his salvation.
My rating is actually undefined as the end didn't really clicked and left me rather confused ...but the writing style is just marvelous and makes the book worth reading.

This is a fantastically written book, that I personally found really difficult to get into. We meet Jack, our protagonist, and right from the outset, something is clearly wrong with him. He is an alcoholic, but a functioning one, or at least he is clinging on by his fingertips. The plume of smoke erupting from the other side of London grabs your attention and I was fully ready to be going on a dystopian ride, where something hideous is happening in London.

And something hideous is happening in London. But it's less literal and physical than the chemical fire burning miles away. Jack is involved with a tech mogul; one that has unlimited access to data, data that we provide to social apps ourselves. The parallels with real life were not lost on this reader. And he has plans for all this data...

The focus on Jack's alcoholism throughout the book borders on the obsessive. His downward spiral is documented in an incredibly detailed way and is gut wrenching to behold. It is such a realistic depiction of addiction and the lies people will tell themselves to justify the new levels they will sink to, in order to get the next fix. I was really invested in Jack's personal story and whether he would manage to turn it around.

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However the other side of the story; Jack's interview and subsequent dealings with Oliver Pierce, the reclusive novelist, I found less enjoyable. For me, their interactions were too lengthy and indulgent and ultimately, too random to really feel believable.

And the 'Plume' of our book's title? Well, I'm still non-plussed about that. For something that plays such a huge part in the story and its title, it actually seemed inconsequential in the end. Perhaps this is a deeper metaphor that just wasn't realised for me. It's just that this event was hyped up so much at the beginning of the book and never really had an explanation or resolution.

Plume is a really strange but compelling character study of addiction, but I'm not sure all the parts of the story hung together as one sturdy whole.

Plume by Will Wiles is about an alcoholic cycnical journalist whose life is beginning to fall apart.

Jack Bick is an interview journalist for an upmarket London magazine. He has a good track record, but the magazine seems to be drifting and Jack has the feeling that he's about to be let go. In what he expects to be his last week on the staff, he has two interviews to conduct: Oliver Pierce, a psychogeographical writer who hasn't had a follow-up to his bestselling work some years ago (Jack's idea); and an estate agent/property developer that his editor has told him to interview. Given the two options, Jack opts first for lager (the breakfast of champions) and then for Pierce. He and Pierce go off to explore Barking where a large plume of smoke is visible from all over London.

What follows is a meandering story of alcoholism, the seedy side of London life with dead-end jobs, half-fulfilled ideas and half-built properties. Jack is a whinging and unlikeable man who cadges off other people's goodwill. He is capricious and willing to throw anyone under the bus if there's a drink in it for him.

Plume is probably supposed to be both humorous and some kind of state of the nation piece. Unfortunately, the lack of plot or character development; the repetitiveness; the lack of any obvious motive behind any of the actions makes for quite a long and dull read. Some marks for ideas, the odd set piece and references to tube trains. Unfortunately, this just don't come together in a workable framework. The end, when it comes, goes off in a surreal direction that confuses more than it intrigues.

This is a shame, because Care of Wooden Floors was a superb, focused, funny novel that was well paced and spoke to this reader about the human condition. Plume doesn't.

‘Here was the future, rising from every phone and computer and device like so much blinding smoke. I could confront it or ignore it, but it was coming. Or I could join it.’

Modern day London, and Jack Bick – journalist, alcoholic, cynic – barely makes it through the working day. His relationship has failed, his next-door neighbours are having building work done keeping him awake at all hours, and his bosses at the magazine where he works look pretty much certs to fire him in a downsizing operation. Promising his work 2 interviews, the book explores his desperate attempts to fashion a story from (sort of) recluse writer Oliver Pierce, and property tycoon Alexander De Chauncey. What follows is, well, in the immortal words of someone else, all rather confusing really. The plot hinges on truth and memory, on reality and virtual reality. Pierce made his name with a true-life account of having been mugged, but in an interview with Bick he reveals that he just made it all up. But – ah, here’s the twist – did he, or is he actually just making it up that he made it up….?

Behind the scenes, in a sort of Bond villainesque manner, is the shady figure of Francis Quin, who has developed an app called Tamesis, that seems to merge every form of social media/tracking device. He knows everyone’s secrets, and as the plot unravels, he seems to be controlling everyone involved. As I say, it descends into a lot of conspiracy theory, fear of modern technology, don’t trust anyone kind of book. Which is fine as it goes, but I didn’t really engage with the characters, especially the central figure of Bick who is just pretty pathetic, and whilst others have commented on the humour, I can’t actually remember raising a smile at any point.

It’s an engaging enough read, and it touches on several important themes regarding the way we interact in the modern age, the way we devour stories and the blurring between news and fake news. But, like the pall of smoke which hangs over east London and from which the novel takes its title, it’s all a bit hazy. Enjoyable, decently written, but not outstanding. A pretty average 3 stars from me.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

A fire somewhere in London attracts the people’s attention. Where is it exactly? What is burning? Is it dangerous? But Jack Bick has other problems. His alcohol consumption is totally out of control which highly impacts his job as a journalist at a lifestyle magazine. This has not gone unnoticed and his superiors virtually hold a pistol to his head: either he runs an interview with a real estate manager or he is out. Jack, instead, is highly fascinated by an author who hasn’t published anything for years. His sixth sense tells him that there is a story, but nobody wants to hear about it. Should he succumb or follow his instincts? Well, it’s not really a question for Bick and so a series of catastrophes starts-

I was totally hooked by the flap text which promised a novel about truth – personal truth, objective truth, journalistic truth and modern day London life. Well, yes, this is what it is about, but after a great start with the scene about the plume, the novel completely lost me. It had the impression that the plot did not advance but turn round itself all the time and the protagonist, whose addiction and sloppiness I highly detested, did not help either.

There were some great aspects, especially the question about creating reality and turning lies into facts. Also how real estate works in London and how ordinary tenants are treated just as objects you can make money with was certainly interesting. Yet, for me, the protagonist destroyed a lot and I had the impression that just as Jack Bick lost control of his life, the author also lost the red thread of the plot at times which made it hard to keep focused and go on reading for me.

Was caught a little bit by surprise with this title. After a slow beginning and a premise that seemed to have the potential to go to some trite places, Plume slowly transformed into a compelling look at addiction. The story is peppered with a dark humour as well offering insights into a number of themes which fit perfectly with its contemporary setting.

Recommended.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

Absolutely fantastic novel. Funny, compelling, dark and extremely precise on the mechanics of alcoholism. I haven't read anything by Will Wiles before, but I will be seeking out his previous novels and I will definitely recommend this one.

Sorry not my type of book. I expected funnier and a faster pace.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

I was drawn to this by the description, but unfortunately it's not for me. Other reviewers found it to be fast-moving and witty. I found it repetitive and lacking in charm. Did not finish, but I got nearly half-way so I think I gave it a good chance.