Review - Gamble by Kerry Hadley-Price

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Gamble
Kerry Hadley-Price
Salt, 15 June 2018
PB, 181pp
Source: Purchased directly from publisher

I'd been looking forward to Gamble ever since I spotted it in the Salt catalogue, having loved Hadley-Pryce's previous slice of self-referential noir, The Black Country (review here). And it didn't disappoint. It is though one of those books I can see is going to be hard to review. These are - for me - books which, in spite of enjoying immensely, are tricky because they are in some sense perfect. They are the ultimate distillation, the essence, of what it was the author was trying to convey, so that any attempt at a summary or a discussion  only seems to detract. I'm sure there's an idea in mathematics or computer science about an object that can't be compressed any further because it is, itself, the most compact representation of itself. It's like that.

Anyway, enough waffle, to Gamble. This is one weird book. To begin with the obvious, the voice is like nothing I'd encountered before. It has a narrator, yes, and that might be an omniscient, third person narrator, - but it's hard to tell. The book describes teacher Greg Gamble's past actions, thoughts, and feelings in a generally third person way, but it frequently cuts away, as it were:

"He'll say he felt all his thoughts hardening off..."

"That's what Gamble will tell you"

or even more pointedly

"He'll say now..."

It's as if there is a kind of filter going on. At the same time as being reported on, Gamble is, we sense, being informed on, being judged. What do they mean, all these "He'll says"? Do they imply that Gamble will, if pressed, deceive? Or that he has reflected on his life and is now prepared to admit things he couldn't face at the time?

And if there is deception, how deep is it? Is Gamble misleading us about the plain facts of what happened - did any of this story actually happen, at least any of it not witnessed, not involving, another person? Or is he misleading us about his attitude, his thoughts, the interpretation he placed - then or now, whenever now is - on all those moments documented in this book? Because they are documented, in exquisite detail but also (because of the foregoing) absolute obscurity. This is the story of a middle-aged man with regrets. A selfish, solipsistic, man who seems not hostile, not resentful, but simply bored with his wife Carolyn and daughter Isabelle, to the extent of almost withdrawing from their lives until, perhaps, some crisis call on him to "perform".

At the same time he seems ever ready to pay attention to young women, especially young women who are his former pupils. He seems possessed almost of an adolescent attitude, a smouldering anger and tendency to act up (there's lots of smouldering in this book, it's a very smoky book with Gamble's indulgence in smoking almost a badge of rebellion - both against his family and humdrum life and also, perhaps, the illness that it is hinted is gnawing away at him). And there is that youthful self-centredness, inability to consider the consequences of his actions for others. (In one place he rejoices that a young woman he fancies appears "uncareful"). All conveyed in delicate, telling detail which is sometimes (Gamble being the kind of man he is) quite hard to bear. In short I think that Hadley-Pryce has completely nailed a certain sort of character - let's be honest, a certain sort of man. In one sense merciless, exposing him at times as very unpleasant, she's isn't - and the reader won't be - completely devoid of sympathy.

That is, of course, assuming you come to the conclusion that Gamble - if he is in some sense controlling the narration - gives you a sort-of accurate account of what happens. "He'll say he just needed - needs - someone to talk to. Just to talk". So we are told at the end of the book. Is the reader that someone? If so, can they rely on what they are told, or is it just Greg Gamble? He's tricky, that one. "There would have been an argument. But he had - has - a way of sounding sincere when he needs to..."

This book is heavy on contagion, on taint, Gamble exults, after one encounter, at having been tainted, something also expressed in his smoking or the way he seems to glory in the dank, oily waters of the canal. Given the remarkable sense of both closeness and distancing that the text achieves, it's a taint the reader finds hard to avoid: "He felt he was an expert at using and manipulating language to stroke this girl", "He'll say he thought he deserved her.." [my emphasis] - how creepy is that?

In some ways a distinctly uncomfortable read, this is nevertheless a book that must be read. Its prose will ensnare and entrap and it will leave something - perhaps something like a little pearl - behind. Quite apart from the vividly drawn character of Gamble himself, the prose is arresting and haunting throughout.

"There were sounds. Coughs of sounds, anyway." Somebody that Gamble has lost and misses had "flickered, like an illness" in his imagination and memory. A canal is "carved in black against the landscape".

It is a stunning read, though short - its 180 pages packs in more emotion, albeit viscous, congealed emotion like those canal waters - that may books three or four times as long. Written without chapters, it comes over as the transcript of a debrief or an interrogation. A report, perhaps, garnered from tapes produced in some smoky interview room. Raw take, with no introduction, no conclusion, no analysis, no artificial structure imposed on the singular internal life of Mr Gamble.

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

Review - Nutcase by Tony Williams

Nutcase
Tony Williams
Salt, 15 September 2017
PB, 252pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for a copy of this book.

In this remarkable, not to say unusual, book, Williams tells the story of Aidan Wilson, a young man growing up on a tough estate in Sheffield.

Aidan's story is inspired by the Icelandic Saga of Grettir the Strong. I'm sorry to say I am not familiar with that so I can't comment on how it has been adapted but I was very impressed with the way Williams maps the chaotic (from my comfortable middle class perspective) lives of his protagonists, adrift in a haze of drink and drugs and violence, onto the heroic pattern that we see in many ancient tales. After all, these sagas, ballads and myths are generally stories of strong men, strong warriors, whose chief concerns are drinking, having sex and fighting. To judge the lifestyle of Aidan and his mates while retelling and praising stories such as Beowulf or the Illiad seems rather hypocritical, perhaps. So a lot of respect is due Williams for forcing a new way of seeing things.

That said, it's often a hard book to read. No punches are pulled: rather we get close descriptions of fights and injuries, of the quantities of drugs and drink consumed, of squalid flats and squats, of a lifestyle that might be described as hedonistic if you thought anyone was actually having a good time.  At times I didn't want to go on reading, although Williams does tell a rattling good story and it's so episodic ('The next thing was...') that none of the incidents lasts more than a few pages.

It's a story that is very much narrated, from the first sentence ('Mick Wilson was a man of steel.') to the last ('And there would be a little gap and then they would say "Same again?" ') Indeed, it soon becomes clear that the audience is part of the story - as Aidan rises briefly in popular esteem when he knifes a child abuser and then plunges again, we're very conscious of there being an audience, a wider society judging him, urging him on, condemning, cheering. Sometimes it's the people on the estates around (Irene at the taxi office is a regular chorus as she sucks on her cigarette), sometimes it's a wider public reading the tabloids or following on social media.

And sometimes, of course, it's us, the readers of the book.

If the book's hard, that's appropriate because Aidan himself is also hard in several respects - a tough man, yes, but also difficult to understand, often placid and accepting (as long as he has a few cans and the odd tablet to hand) of what seems an awful life, then animated, driven to avenge a wrong or pursue a feud. He's hard in another sense - unyielding to fate or society around him, apparently content to go the way he must. The only hint of weakness we see is the nightmares - PTSD, the prison psychologist says - brought on after that stabbing. How they affect Aidan's waking hours is left to us to guess.

The book rises to the pitch of a classical tragedy, letting Aidan rise, having apparently done something good for once - and then fall, doomed by some quirk or flaw of character, some lack of interest or focus that always sees him back with the drink, the drugs, shifting from one grim lodging to another, living from one side of the law to another.

Or, let's face, it doomed by having lousy parents, little hope of anything better and too many easy ways out. What was it they used to say about drink being the quickest way out of Manchester?

Overall a powerful, if disturbing, book that will remain with you long after you finish it.

Books I'm Looking Forward to in 2018 - Part Two

Part One of this preview covered January-March 2018. This post covers the rest of the year, focussing on the books I'm looking forward to from April-June.

As always, details may change, dates may go back, books may even not appear. Time and chance happeneth to all. Any errors are of course down to me. Cover images are from authors' or publishers' websites: happy to remove these if the owners wish that.

April

April looks like a busy month bookwise. First on my radar is The Chosen Ones by Scarlett Thomas (Canongate, 05 April). This sequel to Thomas's Dragon's Green is part of her Worldquake series of children's books featuring the resourceful and bookish Effie Truelove. Dragon's Green just started to reveal the world that Effie and her friends inhabit and hinted at conflicts and dangers to come. Now, those seem to be becoming real.

The Wolf by Leo Carew is out from Headline on 5 April, the first in an epic fantasy of conflict and rivalry between the Anakim of the North and the Southerners.

AND there's Lucy Wood's The Sing of the Shore (4th Estate, 5 April). I totally, totally loved Wood's collection Diving Belles and her novel Weathering so it's exciting (yes, I know I over-use that word) to see this collection on its way. From the blurb:

"At the very edge of England, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the land and visitors flock in with the summer like seagulls, there is a Cornwall that is not shown on postcards. It is a place where communication cables buzz deep beneath the sand; where satellite dishes turn like flowers on clifftops, and where people drift like flotsam, caught in eddying tides. Restless children haunt empty holiday homes, a surfer struggles with the undertow of family life, a girl watches her childhood spin away from her in the whirl of a night-time fairground and, in a web of sea caves, a brother and sister search the dark for something lost.

These astonishing, beguiling stories of ghosts and shifting sands, of static caravans and shipwrecked cargo, explore notions of landscape and belonging, permanence and impermanence, and the way places can take hold and never quite let go."

On 12 April, One Way by Simon Morden (Gollancz) gives us a story described as "A murder mystery set on the frozen red wastes of Mars. Eight astronauts. One killer. No way home." I've been enjoying Morden's Books of Down series (Down Station/ The White City) and while I hope for more of that it's exciting to see Morden produce something different as well.

Now we come to THE MOST EXCITING BOOK NEWS OF THE YEAR. Emma Newman's superlative SF series spanning space exploration, colonisation, the corporate state, surveillance society and much, much more is being published by Orion in the UK. The first two books, Planetfall and After Atlas, which have already been published in the US, will be republished in February and March. The third, Before Mars, will appear on 17 April. This is well deserved recognition (and not before time) for Newman's writing in general and for the merits of this series in particular which provides excellent, intelligent speculative fiction combined with a shrewd eye for character. You must not miss this book.

See here and here for my reviews of the previous books.

I have a copy of Blackfish City, a debut by Sam J Miller (out from Orbit on 19 April) waiting on my TBR and it looks like a treat in store. Weird, climate change imbued fiction with a corrupt city in the Arctic, a mysterious woman and a polar bear. "After the climate wars, a floating city was constructed in the Arctic Circle. Once a remarkable feat of mechanical and social engineering, it has started to crumble under the weight of its own decay - crime and corruption have set in, a terrible new disease is coursing untreated through the population, and the contradictions of incredible wealth alongside deepest poverty are spawning unrest. Into this turmoil comes a strange new visitor - a woman accompanied by an orca and a chained polar bear. She disappears into the crowds looking for someone she lost thirty years ago, followed by whispers of a vanished people who could bond with animals. Her arrival draws together four people and sparks a chain of events that will lead to unprecedented acts of resistance."

The Defiant Heir - sequel to The Tethered Mage - by Melissa Caruso is out from Orbit on 26 April. "Across the border, the Witch Lords of Vaskandar are preparing for war. But before an invasion can begin, they must call a rare gathering of all seventeen lords to decide a course of action. Lady Amalia Cornaro knows that this Conclave might be her only chance to stifle the growing flames of war, and she is ready to make any sacrifice if it means saving Raverra from destruction. Amalia and Zaira must go behind enemy lines, using every ounce of wit and cunning they have, to sway Vaskandar from war. Or else it will all come down to swords and fire."

Also on 26 April, Orbit publish Everything About You, a debut by Heather Child. "Freya has a new virtual assistant. It knows what she likes, knows what she wants and knows whose voice she most needs to hear: her missing sister's. It adopts her sister's personality, recreating her through a life lived online. This data ghost knows everything about Freya's sister: every date she ever went on, every photo she took, every secret she ever shared. In fact it knows things it shouldn't be possible to know. It's almost as if her sister is still out there somewhere, feeding fresh updates into the cloud. But that's impossible. Isn't it?"

28 April sees publication of Keeper by Johana Gustawsson (Orenda, next in the Roy and Castells series, following from last year's Block 46.)  The story swings from London and France to Sweden again, and then back to Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel... On a minor point, just look at the continuity in cover design with those slashing knives....

May

May sees the return of several authors I love to read, as well as some who are new to me. First, one of the latter - The Beast's Heart by Leife Shallcross-  (Hodder & Stoughton, 3 May) is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast from the Beast's perspective... hoping for some aching romance here and a bit of fairytale magic.

Also out on 3 May (from Point Blank) and bound to deliver magic is Strange Fascination, the third Essex Witches mystery by Syd Moore. I'm enjoying these stories of the Essex Witch Museum and the paranormal investigations undertaken as a sideline by its staff. There are tantalising hints of a mysterious background and we get to see the story behind various historical mysteries. Strongly recommended.


As if that wasn't enough, there are MORE of my fave authors coming back in May. On 8 May Titan publish the third of Andrew Cartmel's Vinyl Detective books, The Vinyl Detective: Victory Disc by Andrew Cartmel. If Strange Fascination gives an insight into the byways of England's strange history, The Vinyl Detective (we never hear his name) is a window into the subculture of obsessive record collectors with our hero inevitably embroiled in plots and capers which always have just a little touch of the odd. It's not exactly crime but it sort of is, if you see what I mean.

The Old You by Louise Voss (Orenda, 15 May) promises to be an excellent, Hitchcockian psychological thriller. A man develops early-onset dementia and dark secrets from his past emerge... 

On 17 May Orbit publish The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn, a debut by Tyler Whitesides. "Ardor Benn is no ordinary thief - master of wildly complex heists, he styles himself a Ruse Artist Extraordinaire. When a priest hires him for the most daring ruse yet, Ardor knows he'll need more than quick wit and sleight of hand. Assembling a dream team of forgers, disguisers, schemers and thieves, he sets out to steal from the most powerful king the realm has ever known. But it soon becomes clear there's more at stake than fame and glory - Ard and his team might just be the last hope for human civilisation."

Another book from Orenda - Fault Lines by Doug Johnstone (22 May) looks like one of those compelling but impossible to categorise (SF? Crime? Mystery?) stories. A volcano has emerged in the modern-day Firth of Forth, just off Edinburgh, forming an island called The Inch. A young woman finds the body of her lover (and boss) there, and pockets his phone without telling anyone. Only someone was watching...

*DRUMROLL*

Then, I have news of books by two of my favourite superstar authors, Sarah Pinborough and Claire North. You MUST have read their books, if you haven't there is no hope for you, so get these on order NOW as they both promise to be SUPERB.

Sarah Pinborough, whose Behind Her Eyes last year can only be described as f***ing creepy, has a new book, out from HarperCollins on 17 May.

"‘Cross my heart and hope to die…’

Promises only last if you trust each other, but what if one of you is hiding something?

A secret no one could ever guess.

Someone is living a lie.

Is it Lisa?

Maybe it’s her daughter, Ava.

Or could it be her best friend, Marilyn?"

As for Claire North (The End of the Day, The Sudden Appearance of Hope, Touch, The First fifteen Lives of Harry August), her new book is 84K and is out on 24 May from Orbit. 

"From one of the most original new voices in modern fiction comes a startling vision of a world where nothing is so precious that it can't be bought...

Theo Miller knows the value of human life - to the very last penny.

Working in the Criminal Audit Office, he assesses each crime that crosses his desk and makes sure the correct debt to society is paid in full.

But when his ex-lover is killed, it's different. This is one death he can't let become merely an entry on a balance sheet.

Because when the richest in the world are getting away with murder, sometimes the numbers just don't add up."

And finally for May, two more sequels I'm excited about: Gemma Todd is back with Hunted (Headline, 31 May) following up on Defender, set in a post-apocalyptic world torn apart by voices heard in the head, and Andrew Caldecott has Wyntertide, the sequel to Rotherweird (31 May, Jo Fletcher Books). Rotherweird is a wonderfully realised fantasy about a "lost" English town where slightly different rules apply. Eccentrics abound and outsider aren't exactly unwelcome, but not encouraged either. It has a delightful sense of the "might" about it and I'm looking forward to more of the magic.

June

June promises to be another packed month. To begin with, there is a new Peter Grant mystery from Ben Aaronovitch. Lies Sleeping (Gollancz) promises a confrontation (with the Faceless Man, perhaps?) and warns that London is under threat. I don't have a date for this one though Amazon has an untitled Aaronovitch for 21 June - suggestive, but the case remains open. Keep your eyes peeled.

Then, on 5 June, Titan are publishing His Mermaid by Christina Henry who has previously delivered some marvellous, gritty and perceptive reimaginings of Lewis Carroll's Alice and of Peter Pan. Now she turns to another familiar story, the mermaid who leaves the sea for the land. But Amelia ends up in the entourage of the greatest showman of all time, PT Barnum. She leave any time she wants. Of course she can.

Also from Titan on 5 June is The Captives by Debra Jo Immergul. Prison psychologist Frank Lundquist is astonished to see Miranda Greene walk into his office. But why is Miranda, the girl he was in love with at school, serving time for murder? And why does Frank, whose life is unravelling after a scandal, remain as her psychologist rather than admit he knows her? Miranda is determined not to stay in jail, and as Frank’s obsession with her grows, they unleash a wildly risky chain of events, with dire consequences.

Sharing that publication date - 5 June - is The Outsider from Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton) - a crime thriller featuring a suspect who is apparently in two places at once...

June also sees publication of Old Baggage by Lissa Evans (Doubleday, 14 June). (NB this is listed as "Untitled" by Amazon but a book of the same description with this name is listed in the penguin Australia catalogue, so...)

"It is 1928 and Matilda Simpkin, now in her late fifties, rooting through the boot cupboard, finds a small club in an old pair of galoshes. Giving it a thoughtful twirl she is finally struck by an idea. Mattie is a woman with a thrilling past and a chafingly uneventful present. During the Women's Suffrage Campaign, she marched, she sang and she heckled Winston Churchill. She was gaoled nine times. But she is still searching for a fresh mould into which she can pour her energies. Nothing - nothing - since then has had the same depth, the same level of excitement.After all, what do you do next after you've changed the world?"

I loved Evans' previous books, Their Finest Hour and a Half (which was filmed last year) and Crooked Heart so I'm really looking forward to another from her.

Also appearing on 14 June is The Old Religion by Martyn Waites (Zaffre). Tom Killgannon, an ex undercover policeman who's made some very bad enemies, is in hiding in the Cornish village of St Petroc. When he helps Lila, a girl in a different sort of danger, he only brings more trouble down on himself. Described as a "dark, twisted fast-paced and literate page-turner" this looks like the perfect book to take away on your seaside holiday to Cornwall...


Then, on 15 June, there's Kerry Hadley-Pryce's Gamble. (Salt Publishing). "Greg Gamble: he’s a teacher, he works hard, he’s a husband, a father. He’s a good man, or tries to be. But even a good man can face a crisis. Even a good man can face temptation. Even a good man can find himself faced with difficult choices.

Greg Gamble: he thinks he can keep his head in the game. He thinks he’s trying to be good. Until he realises everyone is flawed.

And for Gamble, trying to be good just isn’t enough."

I loved Hadley-Pryce's The Black Country, an absorbing and troubling account of things gone wrong in the English Midlands, a book that draws you in and leaves you thinking long after turning the last page. So I'm desperate to see what she does next.

In The Visit by Sarah Stovell (Orenda, 20 June) A young woman, Annie, looking for her birth-mother takes a job as a nanny in a wealthy household and becomes a close friend of Helen who is struggling to cope with her three children. When one of the babies is injured, the finger is though pointed at Annie. But did she do it?

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay (Titan, 26 June) is described as "an intense novel of psychological horror and suspense." It features a family on holiday who are terrorised by four strangers... but this isn't just about survive in the face of an external threat. These strangers are concerned with the end of the world, either bringing it about or averting it. or so they


Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi (28 June, Gollancz) postulates a 1938 in which death has been defeated - to be replaced by a colonialist scramble for the afterlife, for Summerland. Featuring SIS agents and a Soviet told, Summerland takes the Great Game into an unknown country. Really keen to see what Rajaniemi does after his Quantum Thief trilogy.

July - September

It doesn't end there, of course, there are some great books coming in the second half of the year. Just to note a few highlights, The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross is out on 5 July (Orbit). This is the latest instalment in his Laundry series. The UK Government has now been brought under the control of an ancient evil, aided and abetted by The Laundry, the agency supposed to keep the country safe. What comes next?

On 10 July, Nick Eames' Bloody Rose (Orbit) is out - the followup to his Kings of the Wyld which treats fantasy mercenaries in the style of Rock'n'Roll gods. "Tam Hashford is tired of working at her local pub, slinging drinks for world-famous mercenaries and listening to the bards sing of adventure and glory in the world beyond her sleepy hometown.When the biggest mercenary band of all rolls into town, led by the infamous Bloody Rose, Tam jumps at the chance to sign on as their bard.  It's adventure she wants-and adventure she gets as the crew embark on a quest that will end in one of two ways: glory or death. It's time to take a walk on the wyld side."

Vivian Shaw's Dreadful Company is out from Orbit on 26 July: "When Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead, is called to Paris to present at a medical conference, she expects nothing more exciting than professional discourse on zombie reconstructive surgery. Unfortunately for Greta, Paris happens to be infested with a coven of vampires - and not the civilised kind. If she hopes to survive, Greta must navigate the maze of ancient catacombs beneath the streets, where there is more to find than simply dead men's bones. The fabric of reality itself is under attack, and with the help of a couple of remedial psychopomps, a werewolf, two demons and her London friends, it's up to Greta to put things right." Shaw's previous book, Strange Medicine, introduced Greta and her, well, strange medical practice in London, catering to a VERY unusual patient base. Great to see a follow-up to this.

August sees the third (and final?) of Angela Slatter's Verity Fassbinder books, Restoration (Jo Fletcher, 9 August) with Verity now bound to a psychotic fallen angel. All Verity's mistakes seem about to come back to haunt her...

In September, I'm looking forward to Transcription by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, 6 September). I so much enjoy Atkinson's books, so pleased to see another one coming! And there's Vengeful by VE Schwab (Titan, 25 September). Followup to Vicious - the first of VE's books I read. SO looking forward to more from that world!

There are also new books in the second half of the year from Orenda authors Lucy Hay and Michael Stanley as well as Louise Beech's The Lion Tamer who Lost - I love Beech's portrayal of character and place in her books published so far and new books by Michael J. Malone, Kati Hiekkapelto (Embers) Lilja Sigurdardottir and Antti Tuomainen (Palm Beach, Finland)

Note on gender balance: If I've counted right, the books listed here, excluding the previous paragraph, split 13:21 between make and female authors (so far as I can tell).

Review: The Many by Wyl Menmuir

Image from www.saltpublishing.com

The Many
Wyl Menmuir
Salt Publishing, 15 June 2016
PB, 143pp
Source: Review copy from publisher

Timothy Buchannan buys an abandoned house on the edge of an isolated village on the coast, sight unseen. When he sees the state of it he questions the wisdom of his move, but starts to renovate the house for his wife, Lauren to join him there.

When the villagers see smoke rising from the chimney of the neglected house they are disturbed and intrigued by the presence of the incomer, intrigue that begins to verge on obsession. And the longer Timothy stays, the more deeply he becomes entangled in the unsettling experience of life in the small village.

This book is powerfully written and haunting. Always teetering on the edge of the gothic, Menmuir describes a coastal community that is dreamlike, slightly out of focus, with its own rules that Timothy never grasps. At the same time, it is rooted in the real world: remote bureaucracy, plummeting fish stocks and maritime pollution have blighted the lives of the fishermen.

What are the mysterious ships moored out at sea, setting a limit to how far the village fishermen may go? Why are the fish absent, or when caught, strange, malformed and suffering? Who are the smartly dressed business types with the new van who buy up all of the catch (but who must have every last fish)? What is the source of the contaminants that make the seawater unsafe for swimming?

Many questions, few answers. The most central mystery: - who was Perran, owner of the house Timothy has bought? He had a mysterious background but seems to have been a dominating presence in village life, judging by the villagers' reactions when Timothy begins to ask questions. With more than a whiff of the Wicker Man, and hints of strange rituals up on the headland, one feels this village (never named) is the sort of place it's best to get out of quickly. But Timothy seems to have a reason for staying. We never learn much about him either but there's no sense, for example, that he's keen to get back to his wife Lauren (nor her to join him).

He does, though, seem fixated on the dead Perran. And in turn, the villagers seem fixated on him, something Menmuir conveys in uneasy prose:

"Timothy's car disappears sometimes for days at a time and the village counts the hours until it returns, usually late at night. sometimes with lengths of wood strapped to the roof, with boxes in the boot, and always fuller than when it left."

Can't you sense the curtains twitching, the pub gossip? "He's got a trailer this time. Brought himself a table, wardrobes, a bookcase, the lot."

There's a tension here, a feeling of inevitable confrontation with the village. In some ways it's not a new thing. In a flashback, we gather that Lauren did in fact visit the village with Timothy ten years earlier: they came for a holiday but, even then, ran into the mystery of the place when the owner of the local pub only let them have a room on condition they would sneak in - nobody must know they are staying. Why, or what might happen if they did, is never explained. "They are trespassers in a strange place".

It went through my mind at one point that all of this was somehow Timothy's dream, but we do also see things from the point of view of Ethan, one of the fishermen (only 4 boats still work out of the village). He, too, seems to have had some affinity with Perran and recalls the latter's death, but Ethan also remains mysterious - at the start of the book he has quarrelled with his "wheelman": we never learn why, or much else.

In fact, we don't "learn" a great deal. Much is left unsaid, scarcely even implied. Yet as the prose flows in like a rising tide, it has its effect, gently, but increasingly, disturbing things, shifting them around, reaching places you thought were going to be safe and dry, leaving the reader, like Timothy and Lauren, wondering just how far the water will come.

While a short book, this is not one to be read in a hurry. The prose is twisty and rich and it needs to be savoured and thought about. There are secrets here, and perhaps answers, but they don't come easily and you - perhaps - need to break the rules to find them.

A deeply satisfying read and strongly recommended (though not, perhaps, one to take on a visit to a remote fishing village...)

More information about the book

Review - The Black Country by Kerry Hadley-Pryce

The Black Country
Kerry Hadley-Pryce
Salt, 15 September 2015
PB, 166pp

I bought my copy of this book from Wallingford Bookshop.

The "Black Country" is an area of the English West Midlands which was central to the birth of the Industrial Revolution - it was so called due to the smoke and dirt from numerous factory chimneys.

In Hadley-Pryce's debut novel, there is a different darkness, less easily cleaned up, and the book is a journey into its heart.  It's like a nest of Russian dolls in reverse - rather than each opening to reveal a new, bright and smaller copy of itself, it is swallowed up by a darker, more horrific spectre.

The story is told in a very distinct style: ostensibly about Maddie and Harry, it's indirect, telling us what they thought, what they said they did, what they would have done. At first folksy, like a neighbour gossiping over the fence, the atmosphere becomes increasingly sinister. Nothing is certain, the story is conjecture, comparing Harry's and Maddie's accounts of the same events, dodging back and forward in time and making links in words and actions (and even smells - the book is laden with smells).  We don't know who is narrating: there's an element of judgement in it, we feel, especially when it comes to Harry, perhaps. Or perhaps not. We will make up our minds. We will learn what Harry's like.

Set in the cold of winter, in the Black Country, the book opens in the midst of a crisis in Harry and Maddie's life (I was going to say marriage, but then realised that i'm not actually sure if they are). This is rooted in an evening spent at the local hotel, celebrating the life of their old University tutor. What seems like a bit of marital discord is soon revealed to come from a much darker place. Neither of the pair is innocent. Sullenly, they bicker and try to shift the blame. What happened was bad, but what's revealed in the intricate dance between them afterwards is worse, much worse. Hadley-Pryce's writing and her handling of her subject are simply masterful here - she plays with our sympathies, holding up the pair in various different guises: the downtrodden, ineffective teacher, the desperate husband, the frustrated wife - while gradually stripping both Harry and Maddie of dignity and revealing their nasty secrets. The dry, judicial tone gradually, oh so gradually, becomes disturbing in itself: who is telling this story? An omniscient narrator? An inquisitor or some sort, we might think but with what agenda?

I found the first half of the story the most effective, the weekend in which Harry and Maddie seem almost trapped in a bubble of their own, going through horrific events but with almost no contact with anyone else. They seem like ghosts in the wintry landscape, locked in their own horror, or perhaps figures in a  painting by Edward Hopper. The events of the second half, while revelatory, begin to involve others - a policemen, a nurse, a schoolgirl - and lose some of the sense of gnawing loneness. On the other hand, those revelations strip Harry and Maddie to the bone.

This was a compelling read, but - and this is means as praise not criticism - it's a nasty book in which people do nasty things (and I'm not sure we see the half of it, there hints at plenty more below the surface). One leaves it feeling a need to wash. There is no redemption here, no escape, no happy ending. As Maddie remarks several times, she is living in Hell and indeed, while resolutely naturalistic with no trace of fantasy or the supernatural, this is in essence a horror story where everyone is the Devil.

Except for Faith, of course. Poor Faith.

Highly recommended, and I'm eager to see what Hadley-Pryce writes next.