"From one of the UK’s most acclaimed literary and film talents, Tales From The Mall is a mash-up of fact, fiction, essays, true stories and multi-format media, that tells of the rise of one of the most defining and iconic symbols of the modern age - the shopping mall.
"Why would one woman threaten to kill another for a pair of shoes in the bargain bin? Why do shopping malls evict old ladies? Why are transvestites drawn to mall car parks? Why are malls dying in the USA? What do impulse buys have to do with rioting? And why are market research companies hiding the truth from us? If you want to work out how the modern world works, then ask Ewan Morrison.
"For the last three years he’s been scouring the shopping malls of Britain uncovering the secrets of retail heaven and hell, to tell us how malls manipulate our emotions in twenty cleverly calculated ways; how some malls are ‘vampiric’ and other malls are ‘pregnant’, and how malls are an ideal space to meet a new lover or to kill yourself.
"From over a hundred interviews and confessions, Morrison re-tells the true-life tales of those who work, shop and sometimes even make love inside their walls. As shopping malls spread round the globe at the amazing speed of one new mall every seventy two hours, and everyone, in every country ends up wearing the same fashions, Tales from the Mall gives us a page-turning tour of the history of the mall, and a vision of our coming future.
"Wry, humourous and fast-paced; packed full of terribly tweetable facts and gut wrenching, sometimes hilarious stories; it will change the way you think about your hair colour, your loyalty cards, the global economy and your boyfriend … forever."
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The Guardian:
"The strangely touching little back stories humanise the evocation of a
place that is like everywhere else, and which insists the characters
there are like everyone else. These range from the woman who knows, from
her call-centre job, to which demographic category she belongs, to the
weekend dad who isn't allowed to take his children to fast-food shops,
but somehow knows the entire menu, to the wife-to-be whose final fling
is structured around brands and what they might mean, or fail to mean."review
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The Independent:
"... Stories such as 'Recycling' and the oddly compelling history of the shopping mall deserve the reader's full attention. Morrison glides us through people's lives, picking up tips for creating havoc at malls, digesting facts and stats, dipping into the loneliness at the heart of consumerism. The effect is, like a mall, mostly dazzling."review
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