Fleeting - encounters on London buses
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Les Fugitives
Publishing:3rd Dec '26
£9.99
This title is due to be published on 3rd December, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Since Michele Roberts moved south of the River Thames some sixteen years ago, the pages of her diaries have filled with notes about her bus travels. These brilliantly observed vignettes depict the city in all its rackety diversity as she lends an ear to fellow passengers of all ages and walks of life. Roberts is alive to the eccentric and the mundane alike, as well as to her own changeable perception, and captures the mercurial quality of metropolitan bus journeys in and out of south London. Fleeting they may be, but these encounters on London buses are recorded with tremendous warmth and wit, and these diary extracts distil a lifetime of literary craft.
'Living in London, I relish travelling by bus. Sometimes sitting upstairs at the front, to get the view, as we zip or creep across the river. Sometimes sitting downstairs, near the door, to get the fresh air. I prefer a bus journey to one on the tube because our progress, nosing through the traffic, works like a live line drawing, creates a live map, connecting the different parts of the city, letting me see it whole (...) I take a back seat much of the time, figuratively speaking. This is not a memoir so much as a sketch of people moving around our city, whether we feel we belong in it or not.' - Michele Roberts, from the book's introduction
Advance praise:
'Delightful and inspiring, these little vignettes say so much just by capturing the prosaic and the everyday. They remind me to be more observant and more compassionate, as Michele is. And of the great equalizer of the bus.' - Aaron Hicklin
'An enchanting and charming chronicle of the absurd comedy of the quotidian. It leaves you feeling more alert to the magic of everyday life and the fellow travellers encountered along the way.' - Francesca Reece, author of Glass Houses
'Playful, thoughtful, never judgmental: quietly, mellowly open-minded but with her own sense of self. Michele is the kind of person you'd want to bump into on the bus; and this is the kind of book you'd want to have until you do. Such good company.' - Magnus Rena
'[A] candid, absorbing journal of her day-to-day life and search for inner peace.' - Rachel Cooke, Guardian
'Raw and glittering ... [Michele Roberts] writes with such lyrical precision, such an eye for the luscious detail, that her journey from despair to something like hope feels for us like being a guest at a stupendous banquet ... the real healing in this book seems to lie in Roberts's gift for turning the stuff of the everyday into something so mesmerising that it lifts you into another realm.' - Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times
'She is a good companion: generous enough to be likeable, yet prickly enough to be interesting, and her descriptions of the food she eats along the way are mouthwatering.' - Dani Garavelli, Big Issue
On Cut Out:
'A sumptuously written and life-affirming examination of what it is to be an artist, a woman, a feminist ... Every page flickers and glows with colour.' - Amanda Craig, Literary Review
'This often lyrical and always atmospheric novel ... offers deep delights. It's a book to be read slowly, taking time to pause, remember, picture and dream.' - Alan Massie, Scotsman
ISBN: 9781919480008
Dimensions: 180mm x 120mm x 8mm
Weight: unknown
96 pages