…an astute observation of nightclub life, while not glamorous it’s not boring either, and the narrator’s blunt tone delivers the goings-on with a deadpan wit. The lights are up and what is normally hidden with strobe lights and loud music is on display for all to see. ‘The Reprobates’ is an interesting satirical observation into modern nightclub culture, shared in a way to make you consider the horrors of wild nights out.
The titular reprobates, employee and customer alike, are as interchangeable and highly alcoholic as the selection of shots available at the bar…In loving homage to grunge and the ever-bygone nostalgia of a constantly “lost generation.” Grose’s depictions of the club’s rampant alcoholism are painstakingly evocative and realistic. This will entertain any reader who enjoys gritty realism or longs for their bachelor days of unfettered drinking and carousing.
Artfully ambivalent it’s a disturbing read in the best sense with irresistibly bleak appeal as it wallows in the pain and, more daringly, in the pleasure of excess whilst what it lacks in plot, it makes up for with sharp dialogue and superb characterization. The Reprobates wraps us up so profoundly in Munk’s self-destructive spiral, it’s as though we’re seeing it all for the first time and it’s to Grose’s credit that he manages the very neat trick of keeping us interested in a protagonist without a name who doesn’t merit our affection but earns it nonetheless.
Managed by Grose’s self-destructive and unnamed character, Grose has an acute eye for the details of his world and needless to say that sex and drugs come with the territory but The Reprobates is about so much more than drugs, sex and being permanently bladdered. It’s a celebration of tribal ritual and it’s most evident in Grose’s pitch-perfect ear for dialogue and the camaraderie that binds his characters into collective friendship.
A head trip down memory lane for many of its readers The Reprobates is quite simply a superb read and is unreservedly recommended.
…an uncompromising riot of a read voiced by the unnamed manager of a dilapidated nightclub, Munks, whose ruthless capacity for alcohol and self-sabotage threatens to overwhelm him as he tries to save the failing nightclub. Grimly hilarious and with a selection of wonderfully degenerate characters, THE REPROBATES is an addictive, gritty, and hugely entertaining story. Grose shines a bleakly comic and occasionally poignant light on the declining nightclub scene in the mid-2000s with its lost and damaged souls who are struggling to accept that the party might be over.
