The first David Peace book I ever read was The Damned Utd. I had no idea I was reading a “David Peace book.”
I know that sounds like a weird way to look at it but Peace’s style is so distinct in its repetition, bringing the banal to life whether you want to it to or not. I’ve heard it be described as an “occult” writing style because of the way he hides things within his story. Seems accurate to me.
The Damned Utd. was good AND accessible, which made it tough for me to get into his other books at first. The Red Riding Quartet is fascinating, if frustrating. I loved the Tokyo Trilogy — Tokyo Redux was my favorite read of 2023 — but I had to get to a certain point in life where I could appreciate his work.
Now that I’m there, I can show love for Munichs, which is as good as almost anything else he’s written.
In re-telling the tragic events of the 1958 plane crash that left a large part of a top tier Man United squad dead or maimed, Peace tackles the complexity of rebuilding through grief, processing grief, all amidst a massively scaled tragedy. The participants know the show must go on but they don’t know how that will happen. And it is that “how” in which the book’s ugly beauty shines. In detailing those small encounters, those momentary mind references, processing while not having time to process, Peace captures the essence of grief, loss, confusion, and a myopic sense of building something new on the fly. Incredible work.
This made me think a lot of Tokyo Year Zero, the first in that trilogy. The detective has to try and find a killer while struggling with his own personal demons in the midst of an occupied city that’s trying to rebuild. Take that and replace the cynicism of The Damned Utd. with rigid determination, you’d basically have this one.