Review - For the Road by Stark Holborn

For the Road

Stark Holborn
PS Publishing/ Absinthe Books, August 2025
Available as: HB, 62pp, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781803945286

I'm grateful to the author for giving me access to an advance e-copy of For the Road to consider for review.

In the tradition of the gritty Western, Jesse Bartos is running - from what, from whom, to where are unclear, possibly as much to him as to the reader. Jumping from a train, clutching the precious suitcase he daren't open, he ends up stranded at a dusty railroad halt miles from nowhere. A place where the train never comes, the tracks silt over with dust. Where everything is faded, broken or despairing.

There is I think a powerful melancholy to places like Dawn's Holt, places where people only come to be somewhere else. Get stuck there and you may lose yourself, like the body buried at the crossroads whose ghost doesn't know which way to turn. All the imagery here is of death, of letting go, of being carried away - from the dust which sweeps into every corner, to the scraggy hens laying their sulphurous, inedible eggs to the motorcycle gang that periodically threatens to sweep Jesse away. (Would that be to lose himself further? Or a redemption, a way out? Clues are scant.)

Is Jesse going to die? Does he want to? Can he save himself, either by riding away with the biker gang, finally catching the train - or staying put, making a life with Reo, the son of the family living at the station house, who captivates Jesse.

Holborn's writing here blends the Western and the mythological, the strange tales and origin stories of the little family echoing heroic legends of birth and creation from the elements. How come they are here, in the desolate station? Why are they engaged in a losing fight against the ruling powers and principalities, one with which Jesse's fate - and perhaps his own history - are entangled?

A powerful story of sense and feeling, For the Road systematically anatomises a life and portrays a young man who has, though misfortune, come to a turning point, a junction (or, as I said, a crossroads) where things may go different ways. Dawn's Holt (not "halt" - a "holt" is a refuge...) provides Jesse with a little respite, but not much, a time in which choices can be made. This short book shows which ones he selects, and why. It's powerful, concentrated and enthralling, a book to be inhaled as much as read, and then to be considered and turned over after.

Recommended.

For more information about For the Road, and to buy the book, see the publisher's website here.