How I Left The National Grid

In a review of the book The Huffington Post recalled Edwards’ disappearance, adding ‘perhaps this is the figure that Guy Mankowski had in mind when he began to pen his latest novel’.

The danger is I’ll reduce someone complex who wasn’t simply a member of a band I loved, but who had a whole other life that I don’t have a right to trespass into.’[6] In an interview with 3:AM Magazine in 2016 Mankowski confirmed 'Robert Wardner was a mix of influences – you rightly identify Richey Edwards and Ian Curtis, but I didn't want to fictionalize these people in a “straight” way as I didn't get to know them and felt it would be disrespectful, not to mention impossible, to portray such people.

[9] Damon Fairclough, for Louder Than War, commented that ‘the plot throws Forbes into a mission to track down one of the most enigmatic frontmen of the eighties…who apparently led his group from Top of the Pops to global success before vanishing from the face of the earth.’[10] For the Glasgow Review of Books, Laura Waddell commented that ‘Mankowski’s novel is about the pitfalls of externally defined identity; the inability to find meaning and purpose on an individual or societal level results in an attachment to mere symbols of existence.

One ill-fitting mode of living is replaced by another, successfully portrayed as shallow and unsatisfying, just tipping over the edge of not quite right or real enough,’ adding that ‘Wardner’s organic choice to check out from these options altogether – how he left the national grid – is the closest he comes to contentment and self knowledge.’[9] But Louder Than War argued that ‘this intriguing novel is more about the pop fan’s urge to remember, to hold on to the magic of lost soundtracks and the moments to which they’re attached.’[10] The Huffington Post also focused upon the books nostalgic element, writing ‘Mankowski transports us back to a world of smouldering band managers, corpulent record executives and, of course, the ‘girl next door’ who writes a journal, reads Satre and listens to The Cure.

It is a world Mankowski clearly relishes - a bygone era in the 70's, 80's and 90's when people ran fanclubs, wrote fanzines and edited fan-forums to honour their stars and forge friendships’.