As is usually the case with Sinclair this book operates at different levels - often hard to read and at times wilfully obscure, it is still a brilliant read. ( )

More memoir than argument, Sinclair is content to suggest a picture of contemporary Britain not from an elevation, no overarching view, but from gravel paths and car parks. The result isn't precisely investigative journalism but a view on the ground (typically when walking), supplemented with cross-cutting images from film, literature, and visual art; selected interviews and excerpts from diaries; proceeds from council meetings and public debate. (He uses the term docunovel more than once.) The emergent mosaic offers up a broad perspective but not a definitive one, if for no other reason than it demands constant contribution from the reader -- to complete ellipses and supply connections in narrative lacunae. Is this because Sinclair hasn't a specific viewpoint to share, or because he's chosen an unorthodox way of writing about it?

Yet I am left with a fairly specific statement: Sinclair's bete noir is the Grand Project, run rampant in Britain at the open of the 21st century. He pokes at the perforated boundary between civic development and graft -- London's 2012 Olympics the crowning example -- and finds copycats across the UK (Old Trafford, O2 Arena) and the world (Athens Olympics, China Olympics). It becomes clear the GP is a blueprint used tiresomely, persistently, almost indiscriminately as though a complete lack of creativity drives all effort at restoring sound local economies, funding communal space or creating public art. Sinclair is certain communities are seldom enhanced during or after a GP except in terms of brute expenditure and those who profit from such ephemera. Little endures, and substance is vanishingly small when found at all.

A critique of urban design / architecture, aesthetically and regarding a premise of commerce, and more pointedly, that commercial enterprise simpliciter would ever stand in as cultural event.

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Sinclair alludes at multiple points to J.G. Ballard: Crash and High Rise mostly, seemingly Concrete Island would resonate though doesn't mention that title. He does suggest at one point that he writes the manuscript as posthumous report to Ballard, as though honouring conversation no longer possible.

Includes photos of people mentioned in the book, and of the landscape of his walks. Each section is set off with an odd map by Oona Grimes, each map an inexplicable amalgam of precision & distortion, somehow just right for the book.

Original title: Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project, more elegant than the American and neatly emphasising both his site visits (calling time) and his appeal for an end to proceedings (calling time). ( )

"When did it begin, this intimate liaison between developers and government, to reconstruct the body of London, to their mutual advantage? Dr Frankenstein with a Google Earth programme and a laser scapel."

Iain Sinclair is an utterly fascinating man but one that can't stick to the point for long. Compared to W G Sebald, beautifully decsribed by a reviewer as a 'gonzo Samual Pepys' he is an experience in itself. The book will not be to everyones tastes, but it's easy to read if nearly unclassifiable. At once a polemic against the grand project (the soulless, spin of commercial architecture) and in another part memoir, part mediation of relationship of poetry and geography, part eulogy of J G Ballard, part walkers diary. This is a mesmerising, chaotic, unfocused wander through the mind of Iain Sinclair.

"You have a name for your book?" Mimi said.
"Ghost Milk."
"What does this mean?
"CGI smears on a blue fence. Real juice from a virtual host. Embalming fluid.
A Soup of photographc negatives. Soul food for the dead. The universal element in which we sink and swim"
"Crazy, Mr Sinclair" Mimi said, "Crazy again"

He is a walker, deeply connected to his surroundings through art and history, walking through a multi-layered landscape and it is a joy to walk with him. He is self-deprecating, amusing, poetic, passionate, sometimes over the top and whether you agree with his politics there is some food for thought here; corruption and waste on a grand scale, erosions of freedom, ecological disaster, a dearth of future and a destruction of history.

"Dominent colours: dirt-rose, morbid soot, pigeon shit. The railway stations have been around so long they have become accepted natural features. Like cliffs or mountains. London grows its fossils by accretions of indifference"

He doesnt just wander Londons and look on horror at the olympic site, he visits other grand projects: millennium museums and coporate works of art, Manchester's old Trafford stadium, travels up the M62 to muse on the idea of Supercity ("Post-industrial muddle extended, in the London architect bloodshot eyes, into a single hallucinatory city"). He interviews artists and their fascinating interview excerpts and diaries dot the text. It's a pure melting pot, a maelstrom of ideas.

"The Trafford Centre has its own microclimate and it smells like dead television. Like the after-sweat of an Oscar ceremony; hope dashed, lust curtailed, fear tasted."

I do recommend it although perhaps start with his more famous works like London Orbital. Still it's an experience like no other. ( )