Strange Itineraries – Tim Powers

Tim Powers is an old favourite on this blog, and it was with a little, sad, shock that I realised not long ago that I had finally obtained and read all of his books, from his first pot-boiling written-to-length novels to his recent masterwork Declare.

Imagine how pleased I was, then, to read that a collection of Powers’ rare short fiction was in the offing. I ordered it immediately, and months went by. Amazon kept emailing me with apologies for the delay, asking if I wanted to keep my order on the system. And then, finally, Strange Itineraries arrived.

It’s skimpy, at just over 200 pages, but can be enjoyed at a leisurely pace. For example, I read the first story in the collection and immediately re-read it, enjoying it a second time with no pause in between.

What you get for your money is a taster of the weird world of Powers. The opening story features a man who receives an odd phone-call from a rasp-throated stranger, gets badly injured by a gas explosion at his house, and then finds himself living in the weird space of his uncle’s old home, where a couple of cases of cold beer might appear from some space-time wormhole at any moment. (Only, with Powers, you don’t get SF language like “space-time” or “wormhole.” Instead you get “mirage”, or some such analogue equivalent.)

In another story, a motorist picks up a hitch-hiker, gets offended by something he says, kicks him out of the car, and then picks the same man up again a few miles down the road. Only it’s earlier, not later, and they haven’t met yet. Er…

A priest sits down to take confessions, whilst worrying about a previous session in which a parishioner tied him in doctrinal knots with legalistic spiritual arguments. “But you can’t absolve me if…” And what if the sin is suicide, and the parishioner is some kind of ghost?

There’s often a trick to these stories, a doubling back, a repeat and reverse, which in the short story form works less effectively than it does in his longer works. Ghosts and pilgrims collide, and you get a brief taster of the world-within-the-world that is the Powers milieu. Not as good as his novels, but still good enough for the fan, and an ideal introduction for one who wants to dip a toe.

On this subject, I was discussing yesterday with friends how Science Fiction is incredibly popular, but that often people unfamiliar with the breadth, depth, and variety of SF didn’t know they liked it. Desperate Housewives: narrated by a dead woman. Lost: strange things going on on that island (a polar bear in the tropics?). Magic Realism in literature: SF by another name, which is where Tim Powers emerges. If his novels have too much page-turning plot to be considered truly literary, then these short stories are probably respectably obscure.

Three Thrillers Three

three thrillers
Originally uploaded by mcmrbt.

Michael Connelly has Bosch back on the force in this latest instalment (The Closers); quite right too. Retirement didn’t suit Bosch, nor the life of a private eye. Bosch goes back to an LAPD that is in the process of cleaning itself up, and like the South African process of reconciliation, looking back at old cases with new eyes. Cold cases has become a bit of a televisual cliché of late – although not handled that well in my opinion – and Connelly ruefully acknowledges this, having one of the minor characters work in publicity for such a programme (and ignored by Bosch).

Anyway, it’s a decent enough outing for Bosch, though you wonder how many cold cases he can investigate before it gets stale.

Mother and daughter (ew) team P J Tracy is (are?) still on a roll, with Dead Run, their third novel in as many years. This one, 24 style, takes place in the course of one day, featuring many familiar characters confronted with a terrorist poison gas plot gone awry. Good, page-turning genre stuff, but easily forgotten.

California Girl by Jefferson Parker, is much more ambitious, its time scale stretching from the 1950s to the here and now, and its subject matter including local and national politics, social, cultural, and family history, religion, drugs, and the changes brought to the now-familiar Orange County region of California with the years. All this, and the headless corpse of a 19-year-old former beauty queen, makes for a dense and interesting read.

In the end, the necessities of the genre overwhelm the ambition, but for the first couple of hundred pages this is almost good beyond belief. You’ve got your four brothers, whose father works in the orange groves of california; one gets killed in Viet Nam, one becomes a drive-in evangelist, one a journalist, and one a cop. The novel begins with the brothers having a fight with another family from the wrong side of the tracks, and we get our first sight of the future murder victim: the cute and precocious five year old sister of the “bad” brothers.

Years later, she’s been abused by her brothers and involved in underage drugs and alcohol, somewhat adopted by well to do local figures (including a Nixon aide), and becomes, briefly, Miss Tustin (part of The OC), before her appearance on a Playboy cover (clothed) sees her stripped of her title.

A year later her separated head and body turn up in an empty citrus warehouse and the cop brother has his first case as a homicide detective.

The back story is excellent, and I really enjoyed the painstaking attention to detail. The cop brother has to do his time at the county jail, and in uniform, before becoming a detective when he already feels a little bruised and past it. With cameo appearances from Nixon, Timothy Leary and Charles Manson, the background of late 60s California is ever-present, and the destruction of the orange groves and their replacement with housing estates makes you feel the loss that infects the main characters’ lives.

It’s a good murder mystery, too, and the only spoiler is the knowledge that it opens in the “here and now” with the journalist brother telling the cop brother that he arrested the wrong man. So you sort of know, or can easily guess, the ending, which is all tied up in a couple of chapters at the end. I’d have gladly waited for a sequel to learn about who really did it, if only the same justice could be done to the end of the story as there was to the beginning. But it’s all DNA tests and blah blah blah. Shame.

California Girl is good, and well worth picking up, but it could have been great; like Orange County, it’s despoiled by modern day stuff. I’d still recommend it, but the ending is a let down after the excellent beginning.

Summer reading

Including: Douglas Coupland: All Families are Psychotic, Eleanor Rigby; Joshilyn Jackson: Gods in Alabama

summer books
Originally uploaded by mcmrbt.

As (sort of) usual, I badly underestimated my summer reading requirements. I figured, what with having my guitar for company, I’d not have the endless empty hours to fill that I usually have. But I did. This, in spite of an hour or so guitar practice every day, and in spite of scanning and photoshopping 150 or so old photographs from my wife’s family’s albums and taking 800 or so other photographs on various family outings.

Time: and lots of it, which is what having a holiday is really all about. It helps that, staying at the in-laws, I cooked just one meal (a stir fry, to demonstrate wok cooking) in the two weeks and really didn’t have to do any of those household chores, so I really did have lots and lots of time available.

So my small pile of books, consisting of the latest Michael Connelly (The Closers) and the latest PJ Tracy (Dead Run), a single issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and (a late addition, donated by Andrew) Tragically I was an Only Twin: The Complete Peter Cook; my small pile was inadequate. The two thrillers disappeared within three days (see separate review), and I ploughed through the Peter Cook for the remainder of the week, not really enjoying it, because it’s more the sort of book you dip into on the loo or something. I’d taken Swallows and Amazons with me to read to the kids, so I privately fast-forwarded through that, too. I made the Asimov’s last until the second Sunday evening by forcing myself to put it down and do something else at the end of each story (and I cursed the fact that I’d left two further unread issues at home, in spite of thinking vaguely for months that I would take them on holiday with me and do them justice).

Monday of the second week, we went on a trip to Strasbourg, and I had it in my mind that, in such an international city, a University town to boot, I’d find a bookshop with some fiction étrangers. And so it proved. Remarkably, there was a damn good selection, and I picked 4 crackers to see me through the rest of the week: two by Douglas Coupland, All Families Are Psychotic, and Eleanor Rigby. Ones I hadn’t read, though I always think I probably have, since all his books are so similar. Another thriller: California Girl by Jefferson Parker; and gods in Alabama by first-time novelist Joshilyn Jackson. Paid through the nose for them, natch, but not a Euro was wasted.

Proving what? That you can judge a book by its cover, I suppose. The Jackson cover looked a little bit too much like so-called “Women’s Fiction,” but the blurb on the back was more in the line of genre – it was a literary type of thriller: there’s a body involved, but the narrative is chopped up and told half backwards and half forwards, like, y’know, art.

But it was still a cracking read, and a real page-turner. Not enough pages, unfortunately, and I devoured it completely in a single day. It’s the story of a girl who promises God that she’ll stop fornicating and lying, and never return to Alabama, if He’ll just somehow spirit away the body of a High School quarterback she happens to have clouted with a heavy Tequila bottle on the top of a make-out hill when she was 15. Twelve years later, someone turns up looking for the missing quarterback, and everything starts to unravel.

Was four additional books enough? Just about. I saved Eleanor Rigby for the last day, the airport hours, and it was just enough: two weeks, 8 books, and an issue of Asimov’s (a skimpy paperback collection of short stories). Given that I had to pace myself a bit, I’d estimate 10 books, or 8 and a couple extra Asimov’s is really enough. Should make a note of that somewhere.

As for the Coupland. I always enjoy him, because he writes in the way I’d write, in my dreams, and he’s a keen observer of the modern condition who creates pleasurable sentences that speak directly to me. Like this one:

‘Life is boring. People are vengeful. Good things always end. We do so many things and we don’t know why, and if we do find out why, it’s decades later and knowing why doesn’t matter any more.’

Interview with Roger Morris

Questions set by Rashbre, who reviewed Roger’s book Taking Comfort here.

Thanks very much to Roger for taking the time to answer.

Q. HOW DID YOU GET STARTED WITH NOVEL WRITING?

A. You know how when you’re at school you’re encouraged to write stories – nobody told me to stop. I started a novel when I was in my twenties. I don’t think I ever finished it, not sure. I was writing it on an old fashioned manual typewriter. It used to drive my flatmates and neighbours mad, I’m sure. I did once get one complaint from a downstairs neighbour, who was very apologetic. She said it wouldn’t be so bad if it was faster and more even – it was because I used to break off and take long pauses while I was thinking what to type next. I was so embarrassed I bought an electric one. Then progressed to an old-style amstrad.

Q. HOW DID YOU DECIDE THE THEME FOR THIS NOVEL?

A. I was walking down the street in Crouch End where I live and I witnessed an armed robbery right in front of me. Pretty much like the one described in the book. There were a number of other bad things that happened too. Shit! Bad things happen even in Crouch End. I witnessed other bad stuff, some of which also found themselves into the book. Some didn’t. It was more spread out than in the book – I sort of thought that logically, or according to the laws of chance or something, it’s just as possible for a cluster of bad things to happen all at once as all spread out. It’s like the same numbers coming up week after week on the lottery. The idea of taking things to protect yourself seems like a very old magical idea, and seems quite natural to me. It’s akin to the thought that lightning doesn’t strike twice. I’ve never done it, I hasten to add but I can imagine the temptation.

Q. ARE THERE ANY PEOPLE THAT INSPIRED THE CHARACTERS OR THEME FOR THE BOOK?

A. I once went on an induction day at an insurance company that doesn’t exist any more. It’s name was very similar to Diamond. See if you can guess. Anyhow, the telephone conversation that takes place at the beginning of the book, between the old lady and the call handler, was pretty much verbatim. Other than that, I don’t know. I suppose a lot of people have fed into it, subconsciously.

Q. WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO OTHERS THINKING OF NOVEL WRITING?

A. Oh this is the hardest. I don’t think I’m in a position to give anyone advice. Read as much as you can, but everybody says that. Time – you’ve got to be fairly ruthless about making time to write. I got up early every morning to write TC. That helped. Generally, you’ve got to be a selfish, self-absorbed, self-motivated bastard.

Q. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE GENRE OF THE BOOK?

A. I’m not very good at pinning down the genre. It was described to me as a literary thriller. Dunno if that does it. I would describe it as contemporary urban angst thriller type thingy.

Q. YOU CHOSE AN UNUSUAL WRITING STYLE – DIFFERENTIATED PUNCTUATION AND EMBEDDED FACTSHEETS. WHAT GAVE YOU THIS IDEA?
AThe style, and punctuation, were deliberate. I wanted to create an overlap of thoughts, speech, action, so that objective and subjective realities were merged. (Sorry, that sounds really pretentious, doesn’t it?) The multiple viewpoint thing is also part of it. As for the embedded factsheets and marketing copy, that was a way of building up texture. I was also trying to use it to access character by concentrating on surface. Again, I win the Private Eye Pseud’s Corner award. But I feel there is something in it.

Q. CAN YOU DESCRIBE ANY OTHER WRITING PROJECTS?

A. I’m always very cagey about works in progress, in case people come along and go, ‘You know that sounds like the biggest load of shit going.’ I would find that discouraging and maybe lose heart. But I am working on a novel at the moment, which is more conventional in some ways. (I put quote marks around direct speech.) It’s historical, crime, set in a country and city I’ve never been to – so that makes it equally mad in its own way, I suppose!

Q. WHAT IS YOUR FEELING ABOUT THE RECEPTION OF THE BOOK?

A. I’ve been blown away by the response from litbloggers and ordinary readers. It’s been amazing. All my colleagues at work are reading it and they keep coming up to me, saying things like, ‘Finished your book last night. Fabulous!’ Of course the ones that hate it keep politely quiet. But to stumble on reviews like Rashbre’s has been wonderful. Not to mention being invited to do this – or rather, to fall into this trap. The reception from the literary establishment has been disappointing, but predictable. I have coined a term for them: ‘the tosserati’. Please feel free to use it. I want to get it into general usage.

Q. HAS THE BOOK’S PUBLICATION AFFECTED YOU IN ANY WAY?

When I got my advance copy of the book, I said to Rachel, my wife, ‘Well, I can give up now.’ It was a joke. Am I buggery going to give up, but there was a sense of publication itself being the end I’d been working to, and now that I had achieved it…. I was somehow released from a ridiculous pressure.

Q. IS THERE AN AMUSING ANECDOTE ABOUT THE BOOK?

A.Shortly before publication, I went into Waterstones near where I work, and said to the guy, ‘I just want to check if you’ll be getting a book. It’s not out yet, but I just wondered if you would be stocking it. It’s called Taking Comfort.’ He checked the system. ‘Taking Comfort by Roger Morris.’ ‘That’s right,’ I said. He looked at me a little strangely and said, ‘Are you Roger Morris?’ I fessed up. ‘You’d be surprised how many authors we get in here asking about their own books.’ Not really.

(Sorry, I put that story on my blog – but it’s the only one I can think of.)

Many thanks, Rob and Rashbre for trapping me so gently!

Buy the book from Amazon UK

Like A Rolling Stone – by that buffoon Greil Marcus

Review by Roy

i’ve been reading bob dylan’s chronicles ever since santa read my xmas list and put it in my stocking. yes, i’m taking it real slow, because it’s as great as everyone says it is and I want to savour each line, and because i’m pessimistic. even though it’s only volume one, i’m not counting on any other volumes being published. he writes brilliantly, makes it seem effortless, and it reads beautifully.

last week I started like a rolling stone, by that buffoon greil marcus. i didn’t want to get it, because i hate marcus, but on the other hand i love the subject matter, so my hand was forced. i’m trying to read it as quickly as possible because I hate to be in the company of this author, however vicariously. where dylan’s digressions in chronicles always make sense and magically come back to the subject in hand, marcus just irritates as he stretches connections until they snap. when I took acid I had this wonderful revelation that everything in the world was somehow connected to everything else. marcus makes me seriously reconsider this.

this is the man who thought self portrait was shit. context is everything. i suppose people were expecting the next installment of truth when it was released, and when it came along it was the sort of truth they couldn’t deal with. personally, i put it in my top five dylan albums, which might sound like faint praise until you consider that it’s up against blonde on blonde, blood on the tracks, highway 61 revisited, time out of mind, desire, the basement tapes etc. people like marcus had put me off trying self portrait, but eventually curiosity got the better of me, thank god.

dancing about architecture? greil marcus is fred astaire.

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang – Kate Wilhelm

I’m on a re-reading jag at the moment, and I’ve picked up Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by my favourite writer Kate Wilhelm, whom I have mentioned before.

It was first published in 1976, but though it was conceived 30 years ago, it seems more relevant now than it did then.

Science Fiction, as anyone who reads enough of it knows, is always “about” the present in which it is written, whether it is set in the future or not. Quite often, a writer will simply extrapolate or exaggerate present conditions in order to imagine a future. Such fiction is occasionally called Speculative Fiction, carrying the same SF acronym. I don’t particularly care what you call it. You can call it Sci Fi if you want – it doesn’t hurt me.

So it’s interesting to think that WLtSBS was published in the year of the great UK drought, the year of Minister for Drought and bricks in the cistern. And of course, it came just 3 short years after the 1973 oil crises and the subsequent economic shenanigans, for which some African countries are still paying.

WLtSBS is primarily a novel about cloning, but it’s also part of that rich subset of SF, the post-apocalyptic novel, so it’s also about the conditions that lead a group of people to embark upon an experiment in human cloning.

Imagine, if you will, another drought like that in the summer of ‘76. Imagine the hosepipe bans, the water shortages, the messages about putting bricks in the toilet cistern and only using 3 inches of bath water. Imagine you have that, and then the next year: same thing. And the year after that. I doubt it would take even three years to bring us to the edge of a real crisis.

Add to the drought, or climate change, the spread of dangerous infections immune to modern antibiotics. MRSA etc. And Avian Flu, and all the other current threats, like increasing levels of infertility. Factor in a collapse in oil supplies, the resulting social breakdown (first the petrol stations close occasionally, then more often, and then forever), and you have the initial premise of WLtSBS.

Although everything I just wrote could be found in any daily newspaper at the moment, Wilhelm was imagining it all in 1975/6.

A closely knit family/clan decides, early on, to build a private hospital in a remote place, and as society collapses around them, the family repair to their valley to wait out the apocalypse. They blow a damn to flood the valley below and clear it of squatters. They build secret laboratories in caves beneath the hospital and start to clone animals and people.

They discover problems early on. Cloning works for 1,2,3 generations, but then defects begin to appear. But that’s compensated by the return of fertility in the 3rd and subsequent generations. So they think they can clone for a few generations, and then get what start being called “breeders” back again.

But the cloned generations have different ideas. They share a connection and togetherness that the “naturals” don’t have, and a schism forms in the society. One of the last 40-odd humans tries to destroy their experiments, but is caught and exiled.

And so it goes. It’s interesting stuff, and it makes you think. I love her descriptions of forests growing to take over roads, rivers changing course, and nature generally taking over. She’s a superb writer, which makes it all the more bewildering that her novels aren’t easily found – you’ll never find her in Waterstones, believe me. I’ve been looking for 30 years.

But the internet is a wonderful thing, and as such there’s no excuse. WLtSBS should be required reading (especially for scientists and politicians), in the same vein as To Kill a Mockingbird.

The Perishers

Mid-life crisis ahoy: I’ve been thinking about The Perishers lately, and how much I used to love them. The background to this is that Didi, my youngest, when asked what she wanted in her packed lunch sandwiches, requested “Ketchup” which of course reminded me of Marlon and his regular drenching of people.

It never occurred to me that they were at all related to Peanuts and those characters, though of course they were. Maisie is Lucy, and Wellington was as prone as Charlie Brown to lying on his back thinking about stuff. Marlon was – for a time – such a great fashion victim, too, weating his Sgt Pepper style jacket in the 60s before switching to his mechanic’s overalls.

My favourite of all the cartoons was one in which Wellington spotted a falling leaf and waxed lyrical about the coming of autumn – then fell flat on his back when the leaf landed on his head, as if it had been made of lead. I wanted to be Wellington. He had no parents. At first he lived in a concrete pipe, later moving to a disused railway station that had been administered “Beeching’s Powders.”

It’s the social commentary, more than anything else, that sets The Perishers apart. I don’t remember Peanuts having quite so much to say about our society and the way it was changing. It was a shame that they weren’t the same after original team reduced from two to one, and it’s even more of a shame that these wonderful collections – signs of our times as they were – are so hard to get hold of. About time the Daily Mirror group pulled its finger out and issued a top quality retrospective collection, I think.

As I got older, different aspects of the strips appealed to me. These days, their summer holiday episodes seem so precious. A bunch of kids – on their own! – hiking off to a beach, packs on their backs. Boot the dog staring into rock pools as the crabs within suffer apocalypse and worship the eyes in the sky. Love it.

I think my favourite covers of the collection are Numbers 10 and 18 – the bonfire night cover and the summer sunset cover. Both covers evoke a complex set of childhood emotions, memories of brief moments of happiness, otherwise smothered by more desperate stuff. I bought #18 from Amazon, and one other, though that was one of the later ones, without the original artist Dennis Collins. Maurice Dodd’s efforts are amost-but-not-quite right.

The worst aspect, from my point of view, is that my Dad was a printer, and his works printed all these omnibuses, and I always had a copy hot off the press (along with the Andy Capp collections). Now, if only I’d kept them!

Pattern Recognition – William Gibson

Review by Rashbre

This book has been my companion during a recent visit to SoHo in New York City. William Gibson is credited as an exponent of cyberpunk (famously Neuromancer, Virtual Light and Mona Lisa Overdrive to name but three) and there are clear signs of his imagery in films such as the Matrix.

Gibson’s sparse, lucid writing style dramatically exceeds a single genre. This book has haunting imagery, uber cool themes and pivotal twists. Instead of a conventional review, I’ll just describe my return from New York in Gibson’s style. Like it and you’ll like the book.

I promise.

Five hours of New York jet lag should have disappeared by Friday. The ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm have tricked me longer than usual.

Damien’s theory of jet lag is correct: the mortal soul stays leagues behind, being reeled in on some ghostly cord along the vanished wake of the plane that brought me here. Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.

Return from Mirror-world. The plugs on appliances are again reassuringly large, steadfast and triple-pronged, instead of for a species of current than can barely traverse wiring without brown out.

Cars are no longer reversed, left to right, inside; telephone handsets again have a sensible weight and balance and don’t look designed in 1963.

Click Powerbook. Delete spam. Sip the tea made from filtered water. Watch the madly early gray light become more like day.

Enjoy the book.

Bob Dylan – Chronicles Volume I

This review by Rashbre.

Holyhoses Rob’s review is Here.

Dylan has been in my soundtrack for the last few weeks; when I recently stayed in SoHo I bought an album in Union Square and I just finished Bob Dylan’s Chronicles autobiography. The UK media is ready to celebrate Dylan’s portrait film by Martin Scorsese, and my co-incidental update prepares me for some interesting coverage.

No Direction Home is the Scorsese title including new rare footage. In the book, Dylan talks about the Gaslight Club, the areas around NYC’s SoHo, Greenwich Village and West Village where he played and hung out and references Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk and Allen Ginsberg.

I liked the beginning and end of his book a lot. The middle details Dylan’s recording work in an enthusiast’s way. The ends were more evocative, conveying the inner voice of Dylan. He makes good witness to his own life, candid and laconic.

There are some great book moments, like his description of his visit to Woody Guthrie’s home, wading across a swamp, meeting a young Arlo Guthrie whilst trying to track down manuscripts of additional Guthrie songs. He ultimately returns empty handed. Fast forward to Billy Bragg and Wilco some 40 years later using those manuscripts for the Mermaid Avenue album. All of Dylan, Bragg and Wilco treating it as a pilgrimage.

Scorsese’s film includes the famous performance from a militant Manchester Free Trade Hall, when a voice from the audience shouts “Judas!” Dylan leans into the microphone. “I don’t believe you,” he says and then after an electric pause – “You’re a liar.” As he blasts the Telecaster into “Rolling Stone” there is confusion, defiance and the start of another chapter.

Don’t look back.

Tag: music, guitar, Bob Dylan

Taking Comfort – Roger Morris

Review by Rashbre.

A recent study discussed on Radio Four said that peak ‘book reading time’ for many people occurs in their teenage years. Something to do with set texts at school, I suppose. Later, I guess people divide into those who read books and those who don’t with special categories for non-fiction, historical, autobiography and sports.

I’m one of the people who does read and usually have one of those untidy piles of partly finished books. Two recent ones to be added are both blog influenced – Improbable by Adam Fawer (recommended by utenzi’s blog) and Taking Comfort by Roger Morris (who writes a blog and has some amusing reflections on getting the book published).

I decided to read the Roger Morris book as soon as it arrived from Amazon and here’s a few comments:

The story starts when our main character, Rob, sees a Japanese student with a ‘Hello Kitty’ binder throw herself in front of a tube train. Rob retrieves the folder and hides it in his briefcase, on the way to his new marketing job. At this point I was expecting a conventional mystery, but we see instead a nascent compulsive behaviour progressing in Rob and the way he views those around him.

Rob lands in a fairly typically described London City office, with the trappings of expensive desk furniture and a role which is not entirely obvious to the reader, or to Rob, it would seem. But that is incidental to the main emergence of his compulsive behaviour, which centres around collecting artifacts from misfortune. The Japanese folder is the first of a series of items he acquires in increasingly bizarre ways.

Interspersed with this are product analyses of everyday (and not so everyday) items, which are examined in minute detail, usually from a marketing perspective, sometimes by specification, and sometimes by benefit or functionality. This has a link to Rob’s professional world, but the same analysis transfers to other actions and situations in the story. This varies from making a cup of tea (an almost Haruki Murukami level of description here) to feature-listing velcro adjustable concealable police body armour.

So this becomes a story about human edginess and obsession as much as about a series of events. There’s a deadening of perspective (like in a madness) between the view of a fountain pen, a hand-gun and a claw hammer – all of which have important places in the plotline.

The situations accelerate in the last section of the book. Some unfinished business creates a situation where Rob’s obsessions become exposed. I won’t say more, in the interests of plot integrity, but there are some neat links to earlier parts of the book.

The author, Roger Morris, uses a style for the book which appears deliberately experimental and somewhat stylised. For example, there’s no speech marks in the text and this adds a sense of transference to the interpretations of character motive. Is the character really thinking the way described, or is it the perception of this state from inside of Rob’s head? I found myself thinking of Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman in places, where the sliding perspective appears rational when considered from within the head of the person describing it.

And in places there are references to idiom (how an American can ‘verbify’ most nouns) and a few other linguistic tricks to create a smile.

I found this an intense book to read. I found myself inside Rob’s head and the compulsive obsessive behaviour and a lowered sense of reality are distrubing traits, more so when they are blended with much other reality descriptions.

This is an interesting example of New Writing, I hope Roger does well from this experience and additionally continues his entertaining blog about the experience of writing.

And I feel I should also comment on the experience of the book itself. A hardback, 215 pages, weight, 0.315kg, Macmillan New Writing imprint, Heronwood Press Typesetting and Printed in China. You’ll know why I’m saying this if you read the book.