Cover of Beatniks

Beatniks

At a party in Bedford in 1995, Mary meets Jack and Neal, a couple of "angel headed hipsters," and the town's very own local "Beats." After a "Beat Happening" at the public library, she joins them for a chaotic road trip, first to the English seaside resort of Brighton, and then to Ameri-ca, where, as they drive to San Francisco, Jack's dreams prove hard to live with. The London Guardian wrote in February 2002 of the "high praise won by Toby Litt, one of the most prolific of the newer generation of British novelists . . . the writer who brought you Beatniks, an ingenious English On The Road of the mid-1990s, [and] Corpsing, a successful raid on the manor of the crime thriller . . . Litt has a lot to show us."

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 336 pages

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Liked Beatniks? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Beatniks. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Darcy's Utopia
  2. Hustlers, beats, and others Shares beats, beat generation, subculture
  3. Frost on my Moustache: The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer Shares travel
  4. Beat Punks Shares beats, beat generation, subculture

“People who read Beatniks tend to reach for these next.”

  1. The Native Commissioner: A Novel
  2. This River Awakens
  3. The Fanatic
  4. The Virago Book of Fairy Tales

“If you want more of the same (travel), start with these.”

  1. In Search Of England
  2. Off the rails: memoirs of a train addict
  3. Tiny Stations: An Uncommon Odyssey Around Britain's Railway Request Stops
  4. Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure

“If it was the beats that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Bop Apocalypse: The Religious Visions of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs
  2. Spiritual Imagination of the Beats
  3. Beat Culture
  4. American Smoke

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Trip Trap
  2. Searoad
  3. The Devil You Know
  4. The Story of Me