3:AM Magazine

London Pub Reviews, Paul Ewen, Shoes With Rockets, 2007

‘Comedy is…an imitation of inferior people…’ Aristotle Poetics

This book is dangerous to one’s dignified and sober image, rather like the Public houses it purports to review. Why? Whilst reading this book on the tube I was regularly contorted with laughter and for one hideous moment in serious fear for my bladder control. The source of this comedy is the narrator’s seeming innocence in a surreal world of inebriation. In his review of the Champion pub (Wells Street, WC1) the reviewer is astonished to find he is transmogrified by the twinned mystical forces of ale and a mysterious collection of glass; at Bradley’s (Hanway Street, W1) he is delighted by the pub’s extraordinary resemblance to a swim-up pool bar (his subsequent attempt at rendering this resemblance complete is emblematic of the reviewer’s whole-hearted interaction with his subject). Like all great comedic hero’s Paul Ewen’s reviewer gently chides his subject under the cover of self-mockery.

This incredible collection of pastiche reviews reverses the superior role of the reviewer and offers a wide-eyed and gently mocking vision of a British institution. His masterful use of a variety of literary tricks — synedoche, parody, metaphor and allusion, ensures that the books essentially repetitive nature is never less than glorious and of course, essential. He perfectly captures the ambiguity and therefore covertly sinister nature of the ‘pub-space’. His clever allegory for the metaphysical and let’s face it, bodily transformations wrought by alcohol with have you hooting with abandon. Paul Ewen — the Chaplin of pub reviewers…

ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Heidi James is the author of Carbon (forthcoming) and the Publisher of Social Disease, home of Tony O’Neill, Lee Rourke and HP Tinker.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Monday, April 23rd, 2007.