The So-Called Mr McFeiss: Re-live 2007 through the eyes of someone you wouldn't want to sit next to on the bus (English Edition) [Kindle-editie] beoordelingen het boek quotes

Archibald McFeiss is lost in 2007. He keeps a diary of the year, in which he tries to make sense of the times he’s just about existing in. Archie is an intelligent but bewildered man who spends his days cleaning a crumbling dairy, consuming foul ale in the semi-company of his hapless and wary (of him) colleagues, and absorbing the tireless and so often contradictory output of the media. The latter, combined with his avid reading and what he’s learned from a past and forsaken life, provide a comical, confused and controversial commentary on an extremely eventful year. Running alongside the major events of 2007 is the diarist’s developing relationships with a handful of similarly forlorn, but endearing characters. These include his loyal co-worker, Roger, a 50-year ex-con with a big heart but struggling brain; Kyle, a worldly-wise 14-year old chav with a taste for soft drugs; Naeem, who runs the shop next to Archie’s flat and whose dourness and cynicism unite the pair; and Braithwaite, the workplace nemesis with whom Archie competes for the affections of their uniquely attractive shop-floor colleague, Wendy Sharples. Wendy, herself floundering and desperate to move on, sees something in Archie most others fail to. As their romance gathers pace, she induces from him emotions he’s at first uncomfortable with, but that he soon recognises and embraces. With the year progressing, and with Archie forming his forthright views on childhood obesity, alcohol-fuelled juvenile gang violence – of which he becomes a victim – political leadership and looming economic and environmental meltdown, there’s a growing sense of his past catching up with him. This is evident in the thoughts and dreams of familiar and loving faces, as well as the increasing number of apparent strangers who ask where they know him from. At one point even Roger, his faithful and mostly oblivious sidekick, questions Archie’s true identity, calling him The So-Called Mr McFeiss. As New Year’s Eve approaches and Archie brings down the curtain on his literary, cultural and political onslaught, is it possible that the lost diarist of 2007 – Britain’s first 21st Century working class philosopher and anti-hero – is about to be uncovered? .