It seems I didn’t.

I tried to take a break.  I started two other books and gave up a dozen pages in.  They were too light.  My brain had grown accustomed to the distressing world of Peace’s Yorkshire and was unable to turn itself to something less somber and grim.

That was slightly worrying.

As it turns out, 1980 is slightly (very slightly) less bleak than either of the previous books in the series.  Less bleak than 1977 – I think – because its protagonist is not so tainted as either Bob Fraser or Jack Whitehead (77′s ‘heroes’); his point of view a little less grimy and sordid. Less bleak than 1974, possibly, because even the grisliness of the Ripper murders holds less emotional resonance than the tortures and murders of the children in the earlier book.

Don’t think it’s a walk in the park however.

Peace brings more of the prose we’re used to; expressive, personal, and beautifully burrowing. We’re with our new protagonist, Peter Hunter but he’s slightly more removed from what’s come before. For all the pain and lies and secrets that are in Hunter’s head, we’re just glad that it’s not so awful in there as in previous books.

Peace makes some progress towards winding up this tetralogy (quadrilogy isn’t a real word) in 1980 and I’m looking forward to finally getting to 1983.

This time, however, there will be something between this and the next Peace book.

At least it is in David Peace’s 1977. Bleak, gloomy and darker than closing your eyes at the bottom of an ocean where even those weird, ugly fish are scared to go.

Awful, terrible, beautiful darkness.  Peace just won’t leave you alone. His words gnaw and eat at you and his story remains in your, now fetid, brain for a long, long time.

I read 1974 a few months ago and needed a bit of time before moving on. I’ll need more time before moving to 1980. These are not easy-reads but they are remarkable reads.

Much has been made of Peace’s ‘stream of consciousness’ prose and it is beautifully lyrical and engaging.  The story focuses on the Yorkshire Ripper murders and is told from the first-person perspective of two different characters (two characters from 1974).  This throws you for a few seconds as you process the first character switch but it’s easy to accommodate.  Oddly – and adding to the disorientation – while both characters narrate their 1st-person story in alternating chapters, one does so in the present-tense and one in the past-tense.

And the violence…  While there was plenty of violence in my last read, No Country For Old Men, it was more distant; slightly more stylised. Peace’s violence is in your face (and your hair and under your fingernails).  It’s visceral and savage and affects you more deeply. Like I say, it’s difficult to forget.

I’m two thirds through and I’m now going to sneak off somewhere quiet and finish it.  If I don’t post again, it’s because I’m huddled in a foetal position, weeping quietly and despairing.

The keen-eyed among you will have noticed my new Penguin Classics mug.  I recently treated myself to two of them. Keep ‘em peeled to see the other make an appearance soon.

*I’m certain I’m not the first to have made this, rather weak, joke.  Apologies.