Dangerous Parking

By Stuart Browne

'The screaming ambulance slows down a fraction as it hits the junction of parkway and Camden High Street. It feels as if my bladder is in my head, and any minute now it will explode, and blast piss... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0747548390
• ISBN13: 9780747548393
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Ltd
• Length: 402 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 10.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Holy Moly!

...I read this book at the perfect time. It deals with alcoholism, death, spirituality, love, and the finding of one's purpose in this big scary world. It's cinematic, it's deep, it's lovely. Holy moly it's good. And it's not just the mian character who is finding spirituality at the end of his life, Stuart Brown poured himself into Dangerous Parking as his final act in this life. It's way too bad that he won't be writing great books for years to come.

Holiday read? Actually, yes...

I read this book on a family holiday in Santorini, Greece. Now, of course I know holiday reading should consist of a diet of Jackie Collins set against the gentle sound of the surf and the clink of ice in one's glass of Ouzo...and for me this holiday was meant to be a break from a stressful time. So, obviously, pick a book about an alcoholic with cancer, eh? But Stuart Browne's brilliant novel sucked me in from the beginning. I found the scenes in which he described his pain and cancer almost too real to bear, but knowing they were real for him made me feel I couldn't cop out and put the book down. I ended the book feeling as if I knew and loved him. Jackie Collins it wasn't...thank God. And thank you, Stuart, for your honesty and generosity.

if you can't stop reading ...

Actually I bought this book accidentally. I am glad I did. When you start reading 'dangerous parking' you will not be able to stop. It's thrilling, funny, sad, creative, realistic, fantastic, strong, and much more. You will live with the main character, you'll feel with him, and for him. From time to time I just closed my eyes and let the picture flow. Great! Many thanks to Stuart Browne. To everybody: read this book!

Reach for your superlatives

It's impossible to offer the smallest criticism of this beautifully written, heart-rending and blindingly honest book. In facing up to his own death, the author has given us a life-enhancing work. It's far from being a depressing read. Browne has far too active a sense of humour and too much love to allow us depression. But you won't come away from it scot-free. Dangerous Parking demands that we inspect ourselves and the way we run our lives. There may be other occasions when an artist has put his entire soul into a single work, but I can't recall them. Start it knowing you won't be reading a better, or more important book, for some time.

The customer reviews of the UK edition said it all! Read it

sfrank@washjeff.edu from Pittsburgh , 2 August, 2000 Browne nailed it. The imagery is cinematically vivid, the tone dangerously comedic, and the effect, in the end, heart-breaking. This is a book that reads like a movie shot by a mad scientist who knows how to grind the human spirit into its purest essence. The thing I find the most moving about this novel, written by a man who was as dear to me as my own brother, is the brutal honesty of it--an honesty that reveals Stuart Browne (a.k.a. Noah Arkwright) as I knew him: terrified of it all, yet brave enough to live life on his own terms right to the very end. When I go back to this book, as I often do, I find another answer to one of the questions I've been asking myself for the last fifty years. Bill Pogson (poggy@tesco.net) from England , 26 May, 2000 This is the book that defines the phrase 'Sieze the Day' I found this book utterly compelling I was sucked in to the pain and trauma of the main characters existance and at the same time amazed and uplifted by his passion for life. This book took me on a roller-coaster of emotions that left me feeling how dare I ever complain about life again. When you've read this book you will realy understand the phrase 'Live one day at a time and make it a masterpiece' John Pearson (johnpearson@england.com) from London , 22 May, 2000 Dangerous Parking - funny, poignant and moving......... Stuart Browne's first and only novel before his death in 1999 is a wonderfully pithy, brutally honest and apparently semi-autobiographical retrospective of a life lived largely off the rails.Jump-cutting around the life of Noah, (Browne's film-making protagonist), this compelling novel embraces love, alcoholism, passion, drugs, cancer, sex, jealousy, hedonism and milk to make its pointed observations on Noah's frail humanity. Although Browne pulls no punches in his descriptions of the physical and spiritual decay of his main character, Dangerous Parking is an incredibly uplifting and life-affirming read, ultimately twisting itself around to show how the real things in life can help to overcome the apparently insurmountable.This warm and moving book will draw you in and keep you close to its heart until it has finished with you, by which time you might even know a little more about yourself than you did before. Buy it and read! A reader from Munich, Germany , 10 May, 2000 Read it! I read this book immediately after reading (and enjoying) Vikram Seth's 'An Equal Music' . How different the two books are, though set in similar worlds. One can lose oneself in Seth's book - Browne's leaps off the page and demands a response. It's brilliant. A reader from London , 18 April, 2000 Stuart Brown is dead. His book is life affirming. At the heart of this book, is a story of an extraordinary relationship. Cancer haunts the book, as much metaphor as the sharp reality it was for Brown; its writing is closer to a raw act of will power, moral courage, and an immense gift of love