I Have a Complaint to Make
Guy Bellamy
Fred Carton, at the age of twenty-five, is stranded in a small country town surrounded by bowler hats and umbrellas; he owns neither. He steadfastly refuses to catch an early morning train anywhere, let alone to a City office.
If the price of living in this world is working for five days out of seven, he is not sure that the place is worth the price. ‘Any fool can go to work,’ he says, ‘Surviving without it is a much more subtle manoeuvre.’
But Fred’s half-hearted attempts to find an alternative fail spectacularly. When he tries to make money, he loses his girlfriend in a poker game…
The pressures – and Fred’s sense of alienation – increase. Finally he cracks. He buys a gun…
Book Details:
- Author: Guy Bellamy
- Published Year: 1979
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Rights Sold
- UK: Secker & Warburg
Guy Bellamy
Guy Bellamy was born in Bristol but lived mostly in Surrey. After National Service in Germany with the RAF, he went into journalism and worked on newspapers in Cornwall, Bournemouth, Brighton and Fleet Street including the Daily Express and Sun. He died in 2015.
More about Guy Bellamy
Book Reviews
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"Good for a laugh."
Auberon Waugh -
"Mr Bellamy is best when he is being sexy."
Sunday Telegraph -
"Breezy, amusing…a sharp accurate picture of a man with nothing in particular to live for."
Yorkshire Post -
"Funny…also serious, inventive, sometimes touching and altogether likeable. Guy Bellamy makes another broadly applicable comedy out of the least exotic materials."
Isabel Quigley, Financial Times -
"I found it all uproariously funny...Fred's comic denial of life is life-enhancing. Thank you, Mr Bellamy."
Tribune