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Extracts

Smoke over Malibu by Tim Walker

Completion

A sharp, sardonic, perceptive and painfully funny book about money, love and the sorrows and joys of modern family life by a talented debut author.

A most impressive, assured and enjoyable debut.

Very funny…Walker [has a] flair for scene-setting.

[A] sharply written, shrewdly observed, satirically funny look at the middle-class obsession with property, the dream that has turned into a nightmare for a generation.

Completion is a witty, deftly-written portrait of a dysfunctional family in contemporary Britain. Revealing about the young: uncomfortably acute about their parents.

Clever idea: Tim Walker’s adroit debut novel tells the story of a scattered London family through their relationship to their Highbury home. This is a story of the rampant property mania that dominates the national conversation and an acute satire on urban First World problems. It’s wittily done…Walker imagines himself equally confidently into the minds of a rich retiree, an expat mum and a Shoreditch hipster…So timely…Walker’s characters are fully fleshed…[and] there are lots of nice touches…This is a proper London novel, and properly good fun.

Completion is an entertaining debut about the way the property obsession has blinded many to the real value of people and families.

Completion threads satire through a territory every bit as cut-throat as the pioneers’ Wild West: the property market in contemporary London…Completion is lively and often hilarious…beautifully tart prose offers something to admire throughout.

Tim Walker's debut novel brims with wit and rich characterisation. It casts a sardonic gaze on hipster subculture, political idealism and our property-obsessed society…The four main plot strands are handled with skill…Completion is a warm and invigorating read, and highly recommended.

Walker’s amusing first novel follows the quirky and engaging family on their lives away from home over 30 years…an enjoyable romp.

[A] deliciously funny novel…Walker’s clever observations on materialism, parenting, love, friendship and even internet dating are piercingly accurate, but served up with a generous dollop of humour…Fluidly written, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, this debut from Walker is guaranteed to leave readers wanting more.

[A] witty, shrewd family saga … Mercilessly well-observed.

Completion is Tim Walker’s first novel, and a pleasing one at that, with strong characterisation and astute observations

Tim Walker's entertaining first novel gets to grips with our property obsessed times.

Tim Walker was born in Surrey in 1980. He spent four years in California as the Los Angeles correspondent for the Independent. He lives in London with his family.

A sharp, perceptive and painfully funny book about money, love and the sorrows and joys of modern family life. 
 
 
MEET THE MANVILLES. 
 
JERRY, a former award-winning adman who’s beginning to leave a trail of ex-wives and semi-estranged children. 
 
PEN, his artist ex-wife, who’s a lot more in love with her new garden in the South of France than with her new husband. 
 
ISOBEL, their daughter, trapped in air-conditioned Dubai, too busy managing her online farm to raise her own children. 
 
CONRAD, her brother, who tends to his bicycles and his latest crush from a grotty flat-share in East London. 
 
The House on the Hill was once their happy family home, regularly featured in the newspaper lifestyle sections and in Pen’s popular children’s books. But the house has fallen out of use, and so has the family. When Pen decides it’s finally time to sell, Jerry discovers some unexpected new occupants who aren’t so eager to move on. Soon the Manvilles – each of them funny, flawed and sporadically lovable – will have to say goodbye to The House on the Hill.

Tim Walker

Though there are some excellent one-liners (“He was no oil painting –unless the painting was a Picasso”), the novel is more than just a spoof: Tim Walker brings to his plot the care of a proper crime novelist… Every character is nailed with a deft line…Smoke Over Malibu reminded me a little of This Book Will Save Your Life by AM Homes in its portrayal of LA misfits finding companionship. It’s a hardboiled story with a soft centre. Characters grow, wounds are healed and old friends become lovers. I can’t help thinking that it would make a great film, if only they still made films like it.

Funny, quirky and confidently written, Smoke Over Malibu isn’t at all what you expect and that’s half of the charm.

The Hon. Lucius Kluge – honourable, lucky, clever – might be the only guy in Los Angeles who's still living in the past. 
 
Lucky pines for the old days of the New Hollywood, before Star Wars and superheroes blew up the movies for good. He spends his days working for an antiques business, his nights boozing and brooding on his former life as an almost-successful screenwriter. 
 
But when his ex-best friend goes AWOL and his elderly boss is assaulted during the theft of a vintage cookie jar, Lucky and his partner Raul are spurred reluctantly into something like action. 
 
A satire of sundered friendships and frayed male egos at the Hollywood intersection of art and commerce, Smoke Over Malibu is a soft-boiled mystery, a fish-out-of-water farce, a buddy comedy, an inaction thriller, a hipster indie. It's Raymond Chandler meets Nick Hornby; it's The Big Lebowski meets Lovejoy. It is absolutely, positively not a superhero blockbuster.

Tim Walker

Praise for Smoke over Malibu

Though there are some excellent one-liners (“He was no oil painting –unless the painting was a Picasso”), the novel is more than just a spoof: Tim Walker brings to his plot the care of a proper crime novelist… Ev ...

Funny, quirky and confidently written, Smoke Over Malibu isn’t at all what you expect and that’s half of the charm.

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