The sixties were swinging – but the seventies were the hangover: darker, nastier, uglier. This cult classic, a sour antidote to A Clockwork Orange, is ‘a powerfully authentic account of working-class life and gang violence in early 1970s’ (Time Out).
Kenny Seddon is sixteen and no longer in school, but he still lives with his mum, dad and sister on the Ashfield Valley council estate, He’s pissing away his life in a series of dead-end jobs, boozed-up nights, mostly disappointing sex and confused violence. The nineteenth century cotton mills that brought prosperity have all been shut down, and Rochdale is fast decaying into just another decrepit factory town where the gangs rule.
Rule of Night creates a chillingly authentic world where teenagers prowl rainy fluorescent-lit streets dressed as their Clockwork Orange anti-heroes, with a backdrop provided by Ford Cortinas, Players No. 6, the factory and the relentless struggle to maintain hope.
Kenny Seddon is sixteen and no longer in school, but he still lives with his mum, dad and sister on the Ashfield Valley council estate, He’s pissing away his life in a series of dead-end jobs, boozed-up nights, mostly disappointing sex and confused violence. The nineteenth century cotton mills that brought prosperity have all been shut down, and Rochdale is fast decaying into just another decrepit factory town where the gangs rule.
Rule of Night creates a chillingly authentic world where teenagers prowl rainy fluorescent-lit streets dressed as their Clockwork Orange anti-heroes, with a backdrop provided by Ford Cortinas, Players No. 6, the factory and the relentless struggle to maintain hope.
Newsletter Signup
By clicking ‘Sign Up,’ I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
Reviews
Hoyle's tack-sharp prose . . . getting inside heads and situations, refusing to exploit, always alert to the speed and clumsy poetry of violence
First published in 1975, the cult classic Rule of Night pre-dates the current vogue for football hooligan books by twenty-five years . . . a chillingly detailed world
A fast, and very engaging, read, a notable work of realistic fiction, and joins its American counterparts, such as Richard Price's The Wanderers, Kem Nunn's Tapping the Source, Warren Miller's Cool World and Hubert Selby Jr's Last Exit to Brooklyn as a classic representative of the genre
A powerfully authentic account of working-class life and gang violence in early-1970s Rochdale