'Grey Love is a great book. I ended up buying it on Amazon, but it first attracted my attention in Foyles on Charing Cross Road. I was browsing through the S's on the fiction shelf when I saw this beautful looking book face out next to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The book has a beautiful cover. A guy sits on a chair with a remote control in his hand. That is it. It doesn't sound much but it is a very striking image.
The book is a one hundred page paperback. On the spine you can see the logo of an, apparently, new independent publisher, who are Tlon Books. The logo looks smart and it looks like a smart setup. You get the feeling this publisher brings together good new ideas to bring out fresh new books.
Grey Love is, I think, a contemporary love story. The whole book is narrated by a London based writer, who is struggling to find love. It seems he is wondering what love is. Most of the book is written with a cold detached style. You are often left wondering if this is actually Jason Shelley or if he is posing as someone else.
I like the grey text (the ink is grey not black) because it makes the book look even better. It is nice to own a book like this especially because it is a limited edition; only 2000 were produced in East London. That is it. No more will get made.
Some of my favourite pieces in it are "the two boys and a girl" about a boy and a girl who meet on the corner of the street next to a bicycle. And I liked "London Bridge to Brighton" which is a letter the writer writes to himself, on a train, describing what thoughts he has.
This is very much a city book and it is a winter book. Don't ask me why- I can see myself reading it in the winter more than any other time of the year.' Amazon.co.uk review by Katie Smart
'5 stars for Grey Love. This writer comes across as an angst ridden poor English Bukowski. The irony in Grey Love is pure genius. 'Cold Pizza Parts 1 and 2' are highlights, and 'Small TV' - 'I've got a small TV/ I want a big one...I've got a DVD Player'' Amazon.co.uk review by Tom Levinge
'Jason Shelley's work has a lingering profoundness which is subtle and powerfully indirect. A contemporary interpretive approach to poetry not seen often and usually discovered far too late. Grey Love, a modern day lexicon of subjective every day observation will leave most readers questioning the smaller details in life. I was moved by the attention to the intimate detail of sometimes mundane situation, this observation of what we may take for granted is gigantic in it's outlook on our too often transient and disposable culture.' Stewart Simpson, Waterstone's Bookshop, Piccadilly