The Unfortunates
B.S. Johnson
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars
3.90
· 10 ratings · 176 pages · Published: 1969
A legendary 1960s experiment in form, The Unfortunates is B. S. Johnson’s famous “book in a box,” in which the chapters are presented unbound, to be read in any order the reader chooses. A sportswriter, sent to a Midlands town on a weekly assignment, finds himself confronted by ghosts from the past when he disembarks at the train station. Memories of one of his best, most trusted friends, a tragically young victim of cancer, begin to flood through his mind as he attempts to go about the routine business of reporting a soccer match.
The Unfortunates is a book of passionate honesty and dark, courageous humor: a meditation on death and a celebration of friendship which also offers a remarkably frank self-portrait of its author.
Tagged as:
- literary fiction 3
- 20th century 3
- classics 3
- realistic 2
- postmodernism 2
- contemporary 2
- philosophical 1
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- content warnings
- death / grief 3
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- book 1
- adult fiction 1