Reviews of Chancing It

(Glasgow) Sunday Herald, December 4th 2005

"Chancing It – Matthew Yorke's second novel – is well-worded, well-made, funny, grave and quietly suspenseful ..." – Karl Miller

The Scotsman, November 5th 2005

"Some twenty years ago Matthew Yorke's book The March Fence won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for first novels. I reviewed it in The Scotsman and said it was "the real thing, the best first novel I have read in a long time". I would then have predicted that Yorke would soon be an established, highly regarded author. But nothing appeared, bar a collection of his grandfather, Henry Green's, previously uncollected writing, which Yorke edited. Even that was rather a long time ago: 1992. A while ago I read The March Fence again. It still seemed very good, and I was even more puzzled that there had been no successor. Now, at last, there is one ... Chancing It is again a very good novel ... Yorke writes with a lovely clarity, making the town [it is set in] come alive. He has imagined his characters thoroughly, especially Steve and Martin. When Steve is walking with the wrong girl, for instance, the right girl comes out of the hospital where she has been visiting her dying father, and at that moment the wrong girl, Anita, takes Steve's hand. The right girl, Helena, sees them holding hands and gives an awkward smile, 'as if she, too, did not know what to say ...' Steve feels 'as if he had been on a train and had failed to get off at his stop; now the train was thundering ahead, the places, the people he was meant to be amongst, receding into the distance.' This is good. There are moments of this sort throughout the novel. It's about the way people – ordinary, mostly decent people – think, feel and behave. It's not exciting, but it is revelatory and deeply satisfying. It's not going to make headlines. It's not going to be talked about in fashionable bookchat circles. It's not going to lead to interviews with the author. It's not going to excite any controversy. But this is true-to-life stuff, about the way people live now in a city a long way distant from the metropolis and without any urban buzz. Matthew Yorke tells it how it is, and that is always worth doing, and the result is worth reading ... [A] quiet triumph." – Allan Massie

 

Daily Telegraph, November 5th 2005

“Seventeen years ago, Matthew Yorke's accomplished first novel, The March Fence, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. It featured an upper-class young man apprenticed to a Leeds steel works, and those with an interest in literary genealogy suspected that the author was doffing his cap to his grandfather, Henry Green, whose wonderful novel Living was based on his experiences working on the shop floor of the family engineering firm in Birmingham. Yorke was reputedly writing a second book, 'on contemporary London', but this never appeared. A biographical note in Chancing It informs us that he now 'works in Leeds as an engineer', which may explain why it has taken so long for this second novel to appear ... Unlike his famously and gloriously oblique grandfather, Yorke writes in a simple, unadorned style, and his narrative is straightforward and uncluttered. Chancing It is, however, more carefully wrought than its rather plain surface might suggest ... [I]t ... makes one hope there will be rather less of a wait for his third [novel]." – Peter Parker

 

Independent on Sunday, October 30th 2005

*****

“Steve was only three when his father was knocked down and killed by joy-riders - a senseless death which sets the tone for much of this excellent novel. The event was awful but the remaining family benefited from it materially: they could afford to buy their house outright with the insurance money. Now, as a teenager, slightly cynical and a little shy, Steve watches as his stepfather Martin and mother Mary-Anne remortgage the family home so they can become property developers. At the same time he and his brother Vinnie are each given a large sum of money by an old family friend. Steve puts his in the bank, while Vinnie invests in a market stall selling bongs and pipes. The whole family, it seems, have found ways to make easy money. Following the example of Martin, who enjoys betting on the horses, Steve decides to place a bet on a cricket match. When he wins, it isn't long before he wants to place another bet, with higher stakes. Meanwhile, Martin buys a run-down flat to redevelop and launches into the task of tearing down brick and plaster. Unfortunately his building methods are unsound and the flat above, owned by a punctilious solicitor, begins to crack up. Vinnie's business, meanwhile, begins to attract unwanted attention. A wry, politically charged novel, Chancing It is much more than a simple fable. Yorke's prose is often poetic, his themes unexpectedly complex; the hapless characters and their sad games of chance are unforgettable.” – Tom Boncza-Tomaszewski

 

Irish Times, October 29th 2005