Cardiff Dead

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  Wanda_Magnus

  12 февраля 2026

  Youth Without Youth

  It seems that I accidentally stumbled upon a book that no one gives a fuck about even in its homeland. When I Googled 'Cardiff Dead' trying to find out if there's any movie adaptation of it, half of the results were about some university stuff member from Cardiff who'd fallen from the fifth floor a couple of days ago. Exactly, 'Cardiff Dead' is dead. But there're still reasons to read it, I believe.

  This is a book about a music band. No, this a book about the Black community of Wales. No, this is a book about leftist youth movements in '80 Britain and Bobby Sands. Or no, this is a book about a lonely alcoholic who craves for love but doesn't get any because he doesn't know what he actually wants.

  A musician named Mazz comes to Cardiff, the city of his youth. Back in his nineteen, he was almost famous, playing guitar in a spontaneously formed Ska band called Wurriyas. He comes there because Charlie, an ex-boxer and the band's founder, is dead. And this visit turns out to be a sweet reunion with people he used to know but knows nothing about now.

  Mazz is just another mildly problematic man, the kind that floods British literature of those days in spades. He has a beer for breakfast, a joint for lunch, and a line of coke for dinner, still being a fully capable adult with some kind of career and interests outside his bad habits. He fucks haphazardly, still preserving some kind of romantic intention (his heart is just really volatile). One moment he thinks he wants something, just to realize the next he doesn't care. If he were a woman, his life would be considered over by now. But since he is a man, a white ever-longing man, his life could never be over because it has never truly started.

  This book starts like a detective, but it's not one in fact. The Internet calls it 'Noir', but it's rather some mix of comedy drama and a failed-coming-of-age novel. I was looking for a book about Cardiff, and this one definitely is one. The city is a standalone character here, growing and changing and molding its citizens into some kind of people they wouldn't always prefer to be. It's simple and sometimes even primitive (for example, I still have no clue what some of its hookups were for), and Mazz is definitely a Marty Stu (handsome and always getting a woman and an author of the song of the generation and learned to swim just yesterday and today he's already catching the coolest wave of Wales on a surfboard). But God, it's so beautifully written. Dry, ironic, deliberately aloof, very British, very 'just sit and watch, that's all you can do.'

  Don't let the genre fool you: it's not a detective. The mystery line is so poor it hurts. It's rather a compilation of portraits: a portrait of an artist as a young man, a portrait of the British music scene, a portrait of Cardiff. Good luck visiting this gallery.

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  Wanda_Magnus

  11 февраля 2026

  Thing about black girls, Mazz reckoned: least black girls his age, they weren't quite so fucking up themselves as most of the girls you met. Most girls, pretty ones anyway, nineteen, twenty, you could just tell they thought they were the best thing ever, never had any idea the world was there to do anything except kiss your arse. Girls like Tyra, or Bobby come to that, you could see they knew it wasn’t like that; world was waiting there with a baseball bat behind its back ready to lick you down any time it felt like it.
  

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  Wanda_Magnus

  11 февраля 2026

  Of course you have kids and stuff and you have to get more responsible, get up in the morning, feed them and clothe them and beg, steal or borrow the money to keep a roof over their head — all that was grown up, fair enough. But lot of people — specially women, she had to say — acted like that wasn’t enough just doing the grown-up business. No, you had to get all mature. And being mature, what was that all about? Mostly it seemed to be about not going out any more, not listening to music, not going to films unless you were taking the kids — not doing anything much apart sitting around and moaning about what losers men were.

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  Wanda_Magnus

  5 февраля 2026

  Like most of the musicians he knew, Mazz didn’t even possess a CD player and had hardly bought any music since the early eighties.

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