- Title: The Dig Street Festival
- Author: Chris Walsh
- Publisher: Louise Walters Books on April 15, 2021
- Genre: General Fiction
- Pages: 354
- Formats Available: Paperback, Audiobook, & Digital
- Rating: 4/5
Trigger Warnings: Bullying
Many thanks to Damppebbles Blog Tours and Chris Walsh for providing me with a digital copy of The Dig Street Festival with a request for an honest review.
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The Dig Street Festival Blurb
It’s 2006 in the fictional East London borough of Leytonstow. The UK’s pub smoking ban is about to happen, and thirty-eight-and-a-half year old John Torrington, a mopper and trolley collector at his local DIY store, is secretly in love with the stylish, beautiful, and middle-class barmaid Lois. John and his hapless, strange, and down-on-their-luck friends, Gabby Longfeather and Glyn Hopkins, live in Clements Markham House – a semi-derelict Edwardian villa divided into unsanitary bedsits, and (mis)managed by the shrewd, Dickensian business man, Mr Kapoor.
When Mr Kapoor, in a bizarre and criminal fluke, makes him fabulously credit-worthy, John surprises his friends and colleagues alike by announcing he will organise an amazing ‘urban love revolution’, aka the Dig Street Festival. But when he discovers dark secrets at the DIY store, and Mr Kapoor’s ruthless gentrification scheme for Clements Markham House, John’s plans take several unexpected and worrisome turns…
Funny, original, philosophical, and unexpectedly moving, The Dig Street Festival takes a long, hard, satirical look at modern British life, and asks of us all, how can we be better people?
My Review
The Dig Street Festival is a brilliant tale of the lower echelons of society. Chris Walsh does an impeccable job of giving the reader odd characters to root for. The way the story unfolds is fantastic. Things that seemingly have nothing to do with each other come full circle in the end. Fascinating!
John, Glyn, and Gabby live ordinary lives and do the same thing every day. They are rather boring for central characters. However, tieing them into the secondary character’s stories, you get one compelling book.
Unfortunately, the festival was a big distraction that didn’t interest me. The festival was such a big part of the story, but it didn’t further the story for me in any way. I wanted more of the backstories.
Even though I didn’t care for the bigger picture of the book, I still loved the book. I read it through in one day because I had to know more. It is for this reason that I award The Dig Street Festival 4 out of 5 stars. If you get the chance to read this one, I suggest you do so.
About the Author – Chris Walsh
Chris Walsh grew up in Middlesbrough and now lives in Kent. He writes both fiction and non-fiction, an example of which you can read here in May 2020’s Moxy Magazine.
Chris’s debut novel The Dig Street Festival will be published by Louise Walters Books in April 2021.
Chris’s favourite novel is Stoner by John Williams and his favourite novella is The Death of Ivan Illyich by Leo Tolstoy. His top poet is Philip Larkin. He is also a fan of Spike Milligan.
Author’s Contact Links: Twitter
Thanks so much for being part of the blog tour x
My pleasure Emma. You always pick the best books!!