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Robinson
Robinson is a persuader. He uses his voice to win and manipulate, and the narrator of this novel even now knows that if he were exposed to that voice again he would fall for Robinson's charm. It led him into the night-world of Soho, of seedy pubs, sexual fantasies, upstairs rooms, violence and betrayal. But who exactly is Robinson and where else will his charms lead?
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First published June 3, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 23, 2020
“There was something vaguely familiar about Robinson.”
An opening line that is something of an understatement. Chris Petit’s crepuscular Soho denizen is a shape-shifting character woven from a dozen different films, novels, and poems – journeying to the end of night in London, not Paris…lurking in the shadows (“Close up, black Oxfords in dark doorway”) in 1980s Soho, not 1940s Vienna…dying in the rain of a disintegrating drowned world sliding into the Thames. These are the rooms of Robinson.
“He shifted through my peripheral vision, a shadowy, nagging figure" says the film-making narrator, as his own world disintegrates and he follows his alter ego into the desolate wet streets and warehouses of the underworld. All of them dead ends.
The narrative is ragged, repetitive, and confusing – but Petit’s cinematic eye gives the novel a bleak and monochromatic atmosphere. Did I say wet? That too. Wet and watery, shipwrecked and drowning.
A memorable addition to the sleazy psychogeography of Soho.
An opening line that is something of an understatement. Chris Petit’s crepuscular Soho denizen is a shape-shifting character woven from a dozen different films, novels, and poems – journeying to the end of night in London, not Paris…lurking in the shadows (“Close up, black Oxfords in dark doorway”) in 1980s Soho, not 1940s Vienna…dying in the rain of a disintegrating drowned world sliding into the Thames. These are the rooms of Robinson.
“He shifted through my peripheral vision, a shadowy, nagging figure" says the film-making narrator, as his own world disintegrates and he follows his alter ego into the desolate wet streets and warehouses of the underworld. All of them dead ends.
The narrative is ragged, repetitive, and confusing – but Petit’s cinematic eye gives the novel a bleak and monochromatic atmosphere. Did I say wet? That too. Wet and watery, shipwrecked and drowning.
A memorable addition to the sleazy psychogeography of Soho.
July 19, 2024
A brilliant novel in parts but flawed, it is a wonderful London/Soho novel - how true it might be hard for a younger generation to know - times change and really great novels survive their immediate surroundings and period and continue to have something to say - I just don't know if this novel will be one of them. Anyone who knew London before the reform of licencing laws and the clean up of Soho (I might at one stage have spoken of Soho as the gentrified 'gay' Soho but that lasted barely twenty years, far more effervescent then Robinson's Soho, only a tatty rainbow flag outside the Admiral Duncan remains more embarrassing then triumphant.*)
The Soho in this novel is the last echo of the Soho that emerged in the years during and after WWII - the years of rationing, high taxes and restricted licensing hours. It was also the era of cash - does anyone carry large amounts of cash or do business that way? Buying more than a newspaper with cash (and who buys newspapers?) is often seen as suspicious unless you are clearly poor then it is all right but you are not.
Robinson, the character and novel, is probably the last of the old fashioned London wide boy novels. Clearly he doesn't pay tax and he knows and associates with lots of dubious characters but it is still old fashioned criminality, of betting, racecourses, dirty magazines and prostitution. A world about to vanish with the internet and social media. I can recognise Robinson's type, I even knew some men like him, alluring in their power and self confidence. This novel captures all of that perfectly.
But towards the end the novel switches, quite seamlessly, but still oddly, from being a novel of obsession amongst low life's into a dystopian vision of the collapse of civilization, or at least London/England into an ecological abyss of continuous rain and rising water in a time and setting that had become Gormenghastian in the way everyone ignores the obvious. According to another Goodreads reviewer the ending ties in with a dystopian novel by J G Ballard which I haven't read and even if I had doesn't really fit with the rest of the novel.
I am left with a wonderfully atmospheric but flawed novel. After publication in 1993 the novel disappeared until it was resurrected as the author (now known as 'Chris' rather Christopher Petit - the name my original edition and if you search for him on Goodreads under Christopher you will draw a blank) published many further novels, none of which I have read. I wonder was this novel a false start or a harbinger of things to come?
Certainly a well written novel, but is it one I can recommend? No answer to that I leave up to you. I will say that while it has a, sort-of, dystopian ending, I cannot shelve it as dystopian because I think that would be misleading.
*At this point in a review I might suggest Googling things but as I lived in Soho at the birth of it 'Gay' identity (very much as an advertising real estate agent image of what New York was and in pursuit of rebranding of London Soho as SoHo New York they tried to rename the area north of Oxford Street known as Fitzrovia as 'NoHo', The absurdity of this is only apparent if you know why Soho is spelt SoHo in New York) and saw it disappear in less than two decades. The Admiral Duncan pub on Old Compton street was the scene of a homophobic bombing which killed several people. The flag was a response to say we're still here, proud, not going be chased away etc. It is sad now because rising really estate prices have killed 'gay' Soho as much as the rest of London, New York, Paris, etc. Now the flag looks just silly as it continues to boast of a time now merely part of 'tourist' London. By the way the bomber also was racially motivated and also planted bombs aimed at Muslims and Jews in East London.
The Soho in this novel is the last echo of the Soho that emerged in the years during and after WWII - the years of rationing, high taxes and restricted licensing hours. It was also the era of cash - does anyone carry large amounts of cash or do business that way? Buying more than a newspaper with cash (and who buys newspapers?) is often seen as suspicious unless you are clearly poor then it is all right but you are not.
Robinson, the character and novel, is probably the last of the old fashioned London wide boy novels. Clearly he doesn't pay tax and he knows and associates with lots of dubious characters but it is still old fashioned criminality, of betting, racecourses, dirty magazines and prostitution. A world about to vanish with the internet and social media. I can recognise Robinson's type, I even knew some men like him, alluring in their power and self confidence. This novel captures all of that perfectly.
But towards the end the novel switches, quite seamlessly, but still oddly, from being a novel of obsession amongst low life's into a dystopian vision of the collapse of civilization, or at least London/England into an ecological abyss of continuous rain and rising water in a time and setting that had become Gormenghastian in the way everyone ignores the obvious. According to another Goodreads reviewer the ending ties in with a dystopian novel by J G Ballard which I haven't read and even if I had doesn't really fit with the rest of the novel.
I am left with a wonderfully atmospheric but flawed novel. After publication in 1993 the novel disappeared until it was resurrected as the author (now known as 'Chris' rather Christopher Petit - the name my original edition and if you search for him on Goodreads under Christopher you will draw a blank) published many further novels, none of which I have read. I wonder was this novel a false start or a harbinger of things to come?
Certainly a well written novel, but is it one I can recommend? No answer to that I leave up to you. I will say that while it has a, sort-of, dystopian ending, I cannot shelve it as dystopian because I think that would be misleading.
*At this point in a review I might suggest Googling things but as I lived in Soho at the birth of it 'Gay' identity (very much as an advertising real estate agent image of what New York was and in pursuit of rebranding of London Soho as SoHo New York they tried to rename the area north of Oxford Street known as Fitzrovia as 'NoHo', The absurdity of this is only apparent if you know why Soho is spelt SoHo in New York) and saw it disappear in less than two decades. The Admiral Duncan pub on Old Compton street was the scene of a homophobic bombing which killed several people. The flag was a response to say we're still here, proud, not going be chased away etc. It is sad now because rising really estate prices have killed 'gay' Soho as much as the rest of London, New York, Paris, etc. Now the flag looks just silly as it continues to boast of a time now merely part of 'tourist' London. By the way the bomber also was racially motivated and also planted bombs aimed at Muslims and Jews in East London.
June 11, 2017
"Robinson" is a great London crime novel. When I read the book it reminded me of Orson Welles if he was a writer in London. The main location for "Robinson" is Soho, which is a place that fascinates me to no end. Also it has a 'cool' quality to it that is great as well. 'Cool' as in emotions being played on the back burner. Nice book.
March 15, 2014
Robinson seems a little cold and indifferent to begin with but, if you keep going until you realise that (SPOILERS...perhaps) you are pretty much reading a kind-of prequel to any of J.G. Ballard's earlier disaster novels (Drowned World, High Rise, even Crash) then it all starts to make sense. The internal apocalypse is upon us again. Certainly more Ballard than Sinclair: but all London.
August 18, 2015
A two-faced flâneur - party animal (Harry Lime/Great Gatsby) turning into a two-headed monster with a movie camera (Fassbinder/Warhol). Somewhat disbalanced (the first part - 50 pages - too short, the second - 150 pages - too long), otherwise very good.
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October 16, 2025In an interview about his work Chris Petit once said: “There are very few films that show what London is like.” In the first half of Robinson, Petit does show what London was like in the latter part of the twentieth century by establishing a distinct mood. Grey lowering skies, rain-slicked streets, pubs, speed- fueled nights. The mysterious, charming Robinson lures the drifting narrator into the city’s seedy underworld. Soho drinking dens, drunk drives out to the suburbs, pale leather clad German couples, opium, dated apartments, pornography, stalking, violence….
As the narrator starts working for Robinson, making porno films in an abandoned factory in Clerkenwell, the novel becomes less bedded in London’s geography, and more spatially abstract, increasingly concerned with images and digital reality. Robinson’s dream factory, the amateur filming team calculating angles of desire, the geometry of erotica. Closed off from the real world, the narrator becomes less human and more camera- like himself throughout filming. He admits “he was out of the habit of talking much” but “there was a continuous flow of dialogue between myself and the machine and the images.” The weather’s still bad but it didn’t matter anymore as he’s always inside. Similarly, Robinson admits “the only time I feel really real is when I catch myself on a monitor screen.” Writing in the 1990s, Petit was prophetic of Instagram culture, where private lives take place online, in the screen. “Access to this new ubiquitous technology meant experience and memory were no longer enough, now it was possible to have a personal visual souvenir.”
Robinson makes the pornos surreal and witty as he wants to sweep away the polite respectability of previous films, but it’s hard to tell if an aesthetic sensibility is the centre of it all, or if Robinson is just satiating his hunger for power and control. The porno films get gradually more violent as Robinson becomes more detached from the main production and starts collating an esoteric private scrapbook. Cuts of news reels, exploitative private videos, the weather. There are some extremely grubby pornographic scenes which may upset the more sensitive readers.
Petit’s style is straightforward and visual. He likes to create images (Robinson stood grinning, swigging from his bottle of brandy, while Babette prowled around his legs), and it’s clear he’s primarily a filmmaker. The dialogue is sparse, the novel more concerned with mood. The plot is limited, determined by the narrators interest in Robinson, and isn’t as important as the strong visual sensibility. We are left with images of Robinson, always at the edge of the frame, the heels of his brogues clicking on the pavement as he walks out of the shot entirely.
As the narrator starts working for Robinson, making porno films in an abandoned factory in Clerkenwell, the novel becomes less bedded in London’s geography, and more spatially abstract, increasingly concerned with images and digital reality. Robinson’s dream factory, the amateur filming team calculating angles of desire, the geometry of erotica. Closed off from the real world, the narrator becomes less human and more camera- like himself throughout filming. He admits “he was out of the habit of talking much” but “there was a continuous flow of dialogue between myself and the machine and the images.” The weather’s still bad but it didn’t matter anymore as he’s always inside. Similarly, Robinson admits “the only time I feel really real is when I catch myself on a monitor screen.” Writing in the 1990s, Petit was prophetic of Instagram culture, where private lives take place online, in the screen. “Access to this new ubiquitous technology meant experience and memory were no longer enough, now it was possible to have a personal visual souvenir.”
Robinson makes the pornos surreal and witty as he wants to sweep away the polite respectability of previous films, but it’s hard to tell if an aesthetic sensibility is the centre of it all, or if Robinson is just satiating his hunger for power and control. The porno films get gradually more violent as Robinson becomes more detached from the main production and starts collating an esoteric private scrapbook. Cuts of news reels, exploitative private videos, the weather. There are some extremely grubby pornographic scenes which may upset the more sensitive readers.
Petit’s style is straightforward and visual. He likes to create images (Robinson stood grinning, swigging from his bottle of brandy, while Babette prowled around his legs), and it’s clear he’s primarily a filmmaker. The dialogue is sparse, the novel more concerned with mood. The plot is limited, determined by the narrators interest in Robinson, and isn’t as important as the strong visual sensibility. We are left with images of Robinson, always at the edge of the frame, the heels of his brogues clicking on the pavement as he walks out of the shot entirely.
June 30, 2022
Started quite well but, for me, lost its way and became a bit of a rambling, incoherent piece by the end.
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November 13, 2022It was good but I don’t know if I would ever tell someone to read it. Currently wondering why I finished this in three days🤨
July 7, 2015
Not at all sure how I feel,about this book. The first 100 pages were kind of slow, but then the nest 75 seemed to progress nicely, but the last portion of the book just left me feeling hallow. I am sure this is how Petit wanted me to feel, but it was too much like a prono version of fight club without any semblanceof a positive ending. Not sure this is how I want to finish off a Monday.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews