The Blog

I’ve written in the past about the strengths and weaknesses of using the present tense in fiction. At times it can be very effective, but it’s a snappy, percussive tense, ill-suited to more ponderous prose. Ian MacKenzie‘s use of the present in City of Strangers is symptomatic of an overall discord, a clash in a novel that doesn’t seem sure whether it’s a fast psychological thriller or a Saul Bellow-style portrait of a man in his city.

The story follows a week in the life of Paul Metzger, a failing writer, still smarting from a recent divorce and a long-term breakdown in his relationship with his brother. His father, an infamous Nazi sympathiser in his youth, is dying in hospital, while Paul walks the streets of New York. When he rescues a foreign boy from a street beating, he finds himself the target of one of the assailants, who begins following him around the city. (more…)

Sum is a collection of forty vignettes describing possible afterlives, written by neuroscientist David Eagleman and collected in a compact and attractive edition by Canongate. The stories, an average of 2-3 pages each, are mostly presented in the second person, describing “your” death with irony, wit and occasional poignancy.

In the afterlife, you discover that your Creator is a species of small, dim-witted, obtuse creatures. They look vaguely human, but they are smaller and more brutish. They are singularly unitelligent. They knit their brows when they try to follow what you are saying. It will help if you speak slowly, and it sometimes helps to draw pictures. At some point their eyes will glaze over and they will nod as though they understand you, but they will have lost the thread of the conversation entirely.

from ‘Spirals’

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New from Picador, Talk of the Town is the first novel from poet Jacob Polley. It’s a coming-of-age tale set in Carlisle during the summer of 1986, and narrated in vernacular by schoolboy Chris Hearsey. His friend Arthur, never the most stable of kids, has gone missing, and Chris sets out to try and find him:

There’s nee mugshot, but I’ve got one already, me own movin clip of Arthur reachin down ter give us a hand up off the deck, the sun comin out from behind his head, dazzlin away his face. I whip the paper shut and shove it back under me bed, further back than the empty mug, behind the shoebox. I get ter me feet, wipin the sweat off me palms on me jeans. There’s nowt else fer it. I reckon I have ter gan and see Gill Ross, cus it’s her who might know where Arthur is, cus of what fat Booby said yesterday on the Arches.

I shut me bedroom door softly affter us.

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Once I’d decided to start reading a little more crime fiction, it could only be a matter of time before I encountered crime publishers Bitter Lemon Press. Their current lead title, and perhaps the best place to start, is Back to the Coast, a thriller by Dutch author Saskia Noort. (more…)

While I was examining PS Publishing’s website a few weeks ago, I decided to subscribe to their flagship quarterly publication, Postscripts. A keen reader of horror as a teenager, I’m pretty out of touch with what’s happening in the genre today, and their magazine seemed like a good way to take a refresher course. Frankly, after some rather dry days under the general fiction sun, I also needed a bit of fun. As a result, it was a slow couple of weeks waiting for my first issue to arrive. (more…)