Rickshaw
David McGrath
Irish is a lout, a twenty-something young lad with an arsehole face and no direction, a life left behind burnt to the ground.
He needs to sort something out.
He needs to stop drinking.
He rents a rickshaw in the West End of London and rides it out into a dangerous bedlam of close calls, near misses, brushes with the law and his own mounting obsession. His fares are the drugged-up and beaten down, the depraved and the scandalous, the troubled, the drunkards and fiends, the lost and the stranded—but no matter how hard he pedals, always right behind and giving chase, is the past.
Book Details:
- Author: David McGrath
- On Submission
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Rights Sold
- US: Thistle
David McGrath
David McGrath graduated from an MA in Creative & Life Writing at Goldsmiths University in 2012 and lives in London. He has won the Peirene Press Short Story Competition, StorySlam at the Royal Festival Hall and was highly commended in the Manchester fiction Prize 2013. He regularly contributes to literary events and performs his short stories across London and beyond. He featured in London LitCrawl 2013 and has worked with Spread the Word for Towersey Festival and performed at Rattles Tales in Brighton. He received Most Valuable Player for writing from Liars League, London 2013. Ricksha...
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Book Reviews
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"David McGrath is the kind of writer your mother warned you about. His work is by turns hilarious, borderline pornographic, bitterly poignant and morally unsettling, and his gimlet satirical eye misses nothing and spares no-one."
Katy Darby -
"McGrath's writing is energetic, vital, and wise. An anatomy of stamina (personal and literal), Rickshaw propels the reader into a frantic sub-culture of misfits, criminals and lost souls, the novel and its enigmatic protagonist shifting up through the emotional gears towards a chance at redemption."
N Quentin Woolf - Novelist and Londonist broadcaster -
"The novel is set on the peripheries of conventional-bourgeois life, and Joe finds himself growing into London, by simply observing those who operate by the rule of the street: thus hustlers, the homeless, peddlers, venders, whores, drunks and drug addicts all become his gateway to understanding the city."
Irish Post -
"Rickshaw is funny, above all, but also wicked, exhausting, and by turns kind. McGrath is a writer of substantial potential, demanding of attention. Rickshaw is that call to attention."
Open Pen -
"A hilarious, poignant and razor-sharp debut, set in the underbelly of London’s West End, as the hero pedals frantically with the past always hot on his heels."
Books Ireland -
"David McGrath writes for 'my mates in the pub who never read', but the rapid sale of copies of Rickshaw after his performance of a scene from this novel to a room of avid readers tells you that his appeal is much broader than that. No, he doesn't like adverbs and he avoids flowery descriptive language. Instead, he uses sparse narrative and superb dialogue to say it all."
Waverton Good Read Award