Johnny Come Home
On sale
8th February 2007
Price: £8.99
‘Hypnotic, feverish and altogether wonderful’
Guardian
Breathless and compelling’
Time Out
As the dreams of the 1960s give way to anger and political unrest in the ’70s, the charismatic anarchist Declan O’Connell commits suicide, leaving his boyfriend Pearson and fellow squatter Nina to try to make sense of what has happened.
Enter Sweet Thing, a streetwise rent boy, who has an uncanny hold over glam rock star Johnny Chrome; and in the wings lurks Detective Sergeant Walker of the newly formed Bomb Squad, who knows more about O’Connell than anyone ever suspected. The course of all their lives is about to change forever.
Guardian
Breathless and compelling’
Time Out
As the dreams of the 1960s give way to anger and political unrest in the ’70s, the charismatic anarchist Declan O’Connell commits suicide, leaving his boyfriend Pearson and fellow squatter Nina to try to make sense of what has happened.
Enter Sweet Thing, a streetwise rent boy, who has an uncanny hold over glam rock star Johnny Chrome; and in the wings lurks Detective Sergeant Walker of the newly formed Bomb Squad, who knows more about O’Connell than anyone ever suspected. The course of all their lives is about to change forever.
Reviews
Beautifully observed and brilliantly paced . . . a fascinating portrait of impotence and amorality by a writer unafraid to take risks
Once again he has skewered an age to the page . . . funny, sexy, touching, too, but it is the undertow of dread beneath the antics that makes it a serious achievement
Fascinating, compelling, pulpy - all you'd expect from a writer who just keeps getting better.
Rich in the forensic detail that's made Arnott the pop-culture laureate he is . . . breathless and compelling
Bristling with contained energy and generating a white-hot unease. Best of all, the novel rescues the 1970s from the simple-minded dismissal of the entire decade as a kitsch-only zone . . . as Arnott argues with urgent, spellbinding power, it was a decade aflame rather than just flaming
Undoubtedly Arnott's best invention to date.
Compelling