Wreckage

[Wreckage] is a really remarkable piece of work. In the foreground is a caper story; in the background, a poetically expressed, apocalyptic history of Liverpool. –The Daily Telegraph

That woman with the grey hair and the specs and the kind face and the accent all like his grandmother, his nain in hospital and when she can talk that is what she sounds like. Don'thitmepleasedon'thitme. These women falling, sliding off this earth and not just from violence but the one commonality that turns life to a wreck–age.

After their botched and brutal mission to punish a one-armed man in a small Welsh village, Darren and Alastair head back to Liverpool to report to their mob boss. On the way home, Darren robs a rural postal office in Wales that serves as a bank and needlessly cracks the skull of a little old postal lady. Darren’s eyes are full of fire. We’re rich, Alastair! But Alastair sees his own nain in this elderly woman and falls victim to his conscience. Darren has finally gone too far.

As Alastair and Darren weave their way through the lowlife milieu of Liverpool, we hear many voices: the alky, the crack addict, the busman, the whores, the gangsters, and Darren’s many victims. But we also hear the voices of their ancestors going back generations of unthinkable grief and poverty.

A fascinating sequel to Niall Griffiths’ Stump, which Irvine Welsh calls a magnificent novel of loss and obsession … [by] a major talent.