Fragmented (Paperback)

Fragmented brings together short stories and sketches, charting a personal journey from squatter and hippy in Seventies London to creative and stable middle age as husband, father, teacher and writer. Responding to and recording social change, often by seizing moments in the flux of city life, the stories are both self contained fragments and a cohesive narrative of a city as much as of an individual.
Many sketches are set in Hackney or Hornsey Rise - at one time the largest squat in Europe. Fragmented brings to life characters and places; examines the underside of London epitomised by outsiders, drugs, racial tension and crime, and explores deeper themes not only of childhood, family and relationships, but also of the nature of writing, political idealism, fear of oblivion and how we conjure and retain a sense of the past. The tone is variously reflective, nostalgic, critical, humorous and detached. -- Publisher: Cinnamon Press
'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.' So said Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century. Johnson's words are shorthand for the idea of London as a multifaceted city with endless possibilities for its inhabitants and visitors - a place in which life really happens and has an active influence on those within. Two hundred years later, one only has to look to Jeremy Worman's Fragmented for evidence that Johnson was onto something. Fragmented is Worman's collection of stories, anecdotes, memories and sketches that chart his personal journey from young, single squatter in the 70s, to father, husband and teacher in the present. All this against the backdrop of a city that he seems to be at odds with, a part of, and in love with, all at the same time. The pictures of London he paints are vivid, gritty and real, yet magical and dreamlike. The same can be said of the many characters we're introduced to, who all come alive while simultaneously being frozen in time. It really is a great book that is perhaps a third shorter than it could be. Worman's writing is delicately crafted and clearly thought through. This, along with excellent ordering and editing of the stories, makes Fragmented a perfectly cohesive collection to be read in one sitting or a good one to dip in and out of. I'll certainly be dipping back in. -- Liam Nolan @ www.gwales.com