#Review - Three Nightjars on the First: The Periphery by Cliff McNish, Static by Justine Bothwick and A Few Alterations by Jordan Harrison-Twist

Three more Nightjar Press chapbooks for your delectation. These are, again, books I received in December and as ever, I'd strongly recommend a Nightjar Press subscription which sends you books regularly and provides signed, numbered copies.

Cover for "The Periphery" by 
Cliff McNish. An abstract image
with a yellow background overlain 
by sworls, speckles and splurges of 
black, red and blue.
Photo by Nicholas Royle.

The Periphery
Cliff McNish
Nightjar Press, December 2021
Available as: PB, 15pp
Source: Subscription
ISBN: 9781907341663

I found Cliff McNish's The Periphery truly disturbing, but I had to think hard about why. Opening with the cryptic 'We began to prefer the periphery' the book describes how the unnamed narrator, their wife, children, pets - and the rest of the world - do just that: living on the edges, consuming dregs, looking away, interacting less, committing less. Beginning as a very close-up, very personal and small scale story, its bounds widen and widen until a sort of slow motion apocalypse is occurring. I was reminded of that Arthur C Clarke story with its ending 'overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out...' except that here the effect seems to be internal, a kind of universal ennui in which humanity is one, but only one, participant. And I found that a really, really difficult idea.

Having considered why I reacted like that, I think it's partly a product of the past eighteen months on-off lockdown, premature opening up, new catastrophe, lockdown again, cycle. The passive life that our narrator finds has an attraction to it simply because it is, clearly, bounded: the common perception of everyone in this book is that this WILL be the end of all things, Sam, and like Frodo and his friend, all is done, all is finished, there is literally nothing to worry about any more. It's a very tempting attitude but at the same time, a very scary one, underlined by the fact nobody here steps out of line, nobody resists. A sort of vision of perfection perhaps but an aside, deal perception.

I think The Periphery will haunt me.

Cover for "Static" by
Justine Bothwick. Against a
background of grass rests a long
piece of wood or stone, a hole
resembling an eye. Photo by 
Nicholas Royle.

Static

Justine Bothwick

Nightjar Press, November 2021

Available as: PB, 12pp

Source: Subscription

ISBN: 9781907341502

Static plays some twisty games with its readers' expectations. On a beach in, I think, Greece, a young German man working as a paddle board instructor trespasses one one summer's day. Or does he? Work asserts his right to be there and the public nature of the beach but still, Efrosini manages to persuade him of some guilt, some kind of crossing the line, perhaps because he had picked up and was going to remove a chunk of fossilised wood. Still she is friendly and invites him in for lunch.

Unknown to Effie, Wolf is being urged on by voices in his head which wish to make the encounter something erotic. Maybe he wants that too? Maybe she does? The writing is I think doing several different things here and Wolf's relationship with that voice (which I suspect is a newish thing to him) is only one of them. We may be in fairytale country, the domain of horror, or witnessing some kind of breakdown. 

The uncertainty itself is delicious, the story perfectly balances between common sense and the fantastical. 

Cover for "A Few Alterations"
by Jordan Harrison-Twist.
Two full-face, passport style
photographs of a man in a 
jacket and sweater.

A Few Alterations

Jordan Harrison-Twist

Nightjar Press, November 2021

Available as: PB, 11pp

Source: Subscription

ISBN: 9781907341618

A Few Alterations is short but Jordan Harrison-Twist fills it with so much and sets up questions that meant I had to read it over several times. At one level, the sense of dis-ease points to something being off from the start - but at another, all the accumulating detail of the narrator's relationship with 'Zürn's tailor shop', their knowledge of dressing and style, the process - which is going on in the story - of obtaining something from the shop, all of that is so spot on that it simply seems like the kind of minutiae that makes up a life. 

I was reminded of the film Phantom Thread, one of my recent favourites. I think both pieces use to their advantage the fact that the worlds of respectively tailoring and dressmaking are present in the background of many of our lives but unknown to most in detail. So many metaphors, allusions and jokes ('So far, with this one, sew good') that add to the richness of the prose and the sense that a great deal is going on which we don't, quite, grasp.

I know that some readers will like to be in command of all the detail, know exactly what's happening and work a story out as though it was a series of puzzles. If that's you, A Few Alterations may not quite be your fit. But if you are comfortable in this style of story, I think it'll suit you very well.

For more information about The Periphery, Static and A Few Alterations and to buy the books or take out a subscription, see the Nightjar Press website at https://nightjarpress.weebly.com

#Review - Three Nightjars on the First: English Heritage by M John Harrison, Middleton Sands by Claire Dean and A Visit to the Bonesetter by Christopher Burns

Happy New Year and welcome back to Blue Book Balloon! 

I hope that the holiday period was all that you would have wished it to be, and that 2022 will be a good year for us all. 

I took an (unplanned) break from reviewing and blogging over most of December - not for any particular reason but just general stuff happening. So, no retrospective on 2021, and no looking forward to the coming year, which I'd like to start with something a little different - reviews of three Nightjar Press chapbooks. 

I received several of these in December as part of my yearly subscription. This is something I'd strongly recommend for anyone who likes a good supply of well-written short stories in beautifully presented editions (it would also make a great present for a reader, it's not too late for that - liturgically, we are still in the Christmas period until Epiphany on 6 January). You can buy them as one-offs, but as a bonus, the subscription editions are numbered and signed.

I have more Nightjars waiting to be read and reviewed, but to start the year off well, here are my thoughts on English Heritage by M John Harrison, Middleton Sands by Claire Dean and A Visit to the Bonesetter by Christopher Burns.

Cover for "English Heritage" by 
M John Harrison. A field of
wildflowers, seen in closeup
(photo by Nicholas Royle)

English Heritage

M John Harrison
Nightjar Press, December 2021
Available as: PB, 16pp

Source: Subscription
ISBN: 9781907341632

English Heritage is a story freighted with allusion and mystery. At some point during the Covid epidemic, Amory, Owen and Max visit her aunt's holiday home near Padstow for a few days away. While we're told that the aunt is ninety three years old ('and still going strong') and a barrister, we are told little about Amory, Owen's or Max's lives beyond that. Amory and Owen seem to be together - we are told what happened when they first visited Max in Shropshire, and they (not the three) have arguments. Amory is the most prominent on the three, although that might just be because it's her aunt's house they are in. 

The story is fearfully intense, often light on detail except for small incidents - flying a kite, making a visit to a nearby stately home. I came away from it thinking I knew a great deal more than was actually said, especially about Amory, but also considering what wasn't said. 

Who the nocturnal and troubling visitor was who opened the garage and used the loo (or didn't). Why Amory thought she lost her car. What was going on between Amory and Max - we get only hints of this but there's a sense of the whole stay being orchestrated around some problem in their relationship with Max there either to witness events or to prevent an explosion. Or just to wake at 3am as he seems to each night.

It's unclear what the 'English Heritage ' of the title refers to. Country houses such as the one the three visits? Their legacy of 'sugar and slavery'? A way of dealing with emotional crises off the page, as it were, as Amory and Owen seem to do here?

All in all, a tantalising story that feels much bigger inside than it looks from without.

Cover for "Middleton Sands"
by Claire Dean. A purple lilac 
tree in closeup (photo by
Nicholas Royle).

Middleton Sands

Claire Dean

Nightjar Press, November 2021
Available as: PB, 12pp

Source: Subscription
ISBN: 9781907341649

If English Heritage has notes of the weird but is placed firmly in our present, Middleton Sands steps a little further away into a near future with some differences. There have clearly been ecological losses to this world in which Ted and his band of enthusiasts set out every Thursday morning onto the sands. Dean is cryptic at first about what they are doing - metal detecting? Digging out lugworms? - and I won't say exactly what it is, but it is linked to that loss. (A clue about what has happened may, or may not, be the terror one of the group feels when the nearby power station sirens sound).

What is clear though is that there have been personal losses, and wider ones, and that the group are trying to recover something. Dean touches on the dynamics of the group and I wondered if that was part of it - one young man assumes he has inherited the 'leadership' of the group from his father, something Ted quietly disagrees with.

I really liked the understand nature of what's happening here, the way that a rather dark reality is hidden by masculine fuss around a hobby and the group and views over what equipment to carry and the best way to proceed, with the presence of a stranger - an unnamed woman - being the catalyst for progress that Ted seems never to have expected. Perhaps.

Cover for "A Visit to the Bonesetter"
by Christopher Burns. Two passport
style photographs of a woman with
shoulder length brown hair. Cover by
Nicholas Royle (found photographs).

A Visit to the Bonesetter

Christopher Burns

Nightjar Press, November 2021

Available as: PB, 16pp

Source: Subscription

ISBN: 9781907341625

A Visit to the Bonesetter is also set in an alternate future, or present, albeit one that is perhaps troublingly close. In what begins as a seemingly farcical, not to say Kafkaesque, bit of theatre, Martin's wife Lisa is served with an order (and he with a copy) to 'present yourself' to 'our official bonesetter'. This is an event that everybody dreads, but, like Lisa and Martin, is unclear about the detail of. 

At one level it is a highly staged event, the summons deliberately public and delivered by uniformed officials following a standard operating procedure and with a flavour of jobsworthism about it. All meant to support a hierarchy, to reinforce who is on top. At another it is very intimate, very private, something that must not be discussed outside the home, this mystique oddly serving to bolster that public. 

It is described as an 'examination', the participant as a 'patient' but when Lisa returns, it's clear that what went on was not medical and not consensual - and that a part of her has been broken and can never be fixed.

The book builds up a creeping tension, based around the contrast between the mundanity of the event, the bureaucracy, its routine nature, and the extreme impact. Also crushing is the sense that all are or were complicit - 'People voted for social control. It was in the manifesto'  - even though they may individually resent or object to what is taking place. The story is very clever in the way that it denies its protagonists a way out, even a way to dissent internally. I wondered if their surname - Smith - might be a deliberate nod to Nineteen Eighty Four, or whether the coincidence might simply be what you get when you make your protagonist as representative as can be. 

Either way, a simple incident sets up very uneasy resonances, portraying an authoritarian State in its very essence.

For more information about English Heritage, Middleton Sands and A Visit to the Bonesetter and to buy the books or take out a subscription, see the Nightjar Press website at https://nightjarpress.weebly.com