Downriver - Iain Sinclair

 I emerge from another protracted read.   Downriver is in some ways future fiction.   Sinclair envisages London dominated by the Widow (obviously Margaret Thatcher), whose rule is absolute and who "accepts the advice" of those who suggest she builds an enormous memorial to her late husband in Docklands.   Sinclair and his mates decide to investigate.   Meanwhile, some of them are pitching a project to the BBC's late night arts programme (under the absolute rule of Yentob) about David Rodinsky, a real-life Whitechapel mystery who was thought at the time to have disappeared, leaving behind a room above the synagogue devoted to his studies in various languages and the Kabbalah.   Sinclair himself had written a book about him with Rachel Lichtenstein, who first uncovered the story.   It later transpired (and is reported in Downriver) that Rodinsky had actually been sectioned in a mental hospital where he died.

The story, such as it ever is with Sinclair, is told in twelve instalments, as Sinclair gets further and further away from his usual East End stamping ground.   The style varies between instalments.   Sinclair is at the centre of each until we come to the last, which he asks his friend the sculptor Joblard to write because he, Sinclair, has somehow lost his voice.   It is still Joblard and Sinclair, however, as they both come to end of the line, the Isle of Sheppey, where the Thames joins the North Sea.

It is all thoroughly enjoyable but I didn't find it as intriguing as Landor's Tower or White Chappell, partly because the Thatcher trope has dated so badly since the novel came out in 1991.   Also, I am really not interested in the wastelands of Essex which I have seen for myself, thanks (I largely share Sinclair's view of it).   Because the two main premises don't grab my interest I found the book too long, though Sinclair is never boring.   As I say, I enjoyed the Rodinsky section and the Joblard switch at the end.