A short tale, told in diary form, of a scientist working at a polar weather station, who is slowly driven mad by a constant humming noise. The story works well enough in showing how the protagonist loses his grip on reality, as his diary entries become ever more frantic; but I think it falls down towards the end, because the supernatural interpretation that’s offered doesn’t quite convince, making it hard to accept the ambiguity for which Preston seems to be aiming. Almost there, but not quite.
This story appears in Black Static 16. Read all my posts about that issue here.
Given that I rather disliked the two Scarlett Thomas novels I’d previously read (Bright Young Things and PopCo), you might reasonably wonder why I even contemplated reading a third. Curiosity, I suppose — I just wanted to see if I could find one that I liked. And, well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I particularly liked Our Tragic Universe, but certainly I found it a more worthwhile read than those earlier novels.
Friday, 18th February, 2000: a meeting of the book group at Inverness Library. It’s notable because the reclusive writer Marjorie Macpherson is leading a workshop; but three people are making their way to Inverness with agendas that will make this truly an evening like no other. Henry Jennings, a single, middle-aged financial adviser, became infatuated with Marjorie (or, at least, with his mental image of her) from reading her books; now, his chance to meet her has come. Henry’s estranged brother, Peter, has been sent a manuscript of a recent poem in Scottish Gaelic by one Angus Urquhart, with mysterious instructions to return it by hand; as Peter translates the poem, something clicks – could Urquhart be Calum Calum, the subject of Peter’s thesis, whose last known work was composed sixty years previously? And Elena Martìnez also has business with Angus Urquhart, as she believes him to be the veteran of the Spanish Civil War who betrayed her grandfather and brought shame on her family.
In the heart of the Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum lies its star attraction – a preserved giant squid. Curator Billy Harrow prepares to take another party of visitors in to see it, only to find that it has, impossibly, been stolen – even the squid’s tank has disappeared. Subsequently, Bily is drawn into a world of feuding cults, where he discovers that some believe the giant squid to be a god, that magic works, and that the end of the world really could be nigh.
Kirsten Reed’s debut, The Ice Age, is a short novel (little over 200 pages), an extended snapshot (if there can be such a thing!) of a period in its protagonist’s life – at one and the same time both satisfyingly complete and intriguingly incomplete.
These thoughts came to my mind when reading the latest chapbooks from Nightjar Press, which are both short, intense bursts of story. ‘When the Door Closed, it Was Dark’ by Alison Moore tells of Tina, a British girl who has travelled to another country to work as an au pair, and finds it hard to adjust to her new surroundings. There’s a palpable sense of menace about this piece, which comes less from images and individual word choices (though it has its share of striking examples; I love this image from when Tina is trying to understand her host family’s rapid conversation: ‘her formal phrases were like wallflowers at a wild party’), than from details of the broader structure. Tina never learns the family members’ names – they’re just ‘Uncle’ or ‘Grandmother’, and so on – which itself makes them more unknowable to her; but, more than this, the whole piece feels like a closed system. We discover barely anything about Tina’s life before the moment of the story; and the accretion of repeated details – the monotonous food, the outside staircase – heightens the feeling that there’s no escape. Moore’s tale is excellent.
violent all of a sudden. Our man is reluctant to return, as he thought he’d left his old life behind; but he seems discontent with even his current circumstances. ‘Black Country’ is a story built on shifting sands, as the actual investigation recedes into the background somewhat (though an answer to what’s going on is provided by the end), and the focus is more on the narrator’s emotional state. Lane’s main theme, I would say, is loss – loss of place, and loss of self. There’s a parallel, I think, between the protagonist’s difficulty in getting a handle on his life, and the social and geographical changes being depicted. I feel that those parallels don’t quite have all the breathing-space they need to establish themselves fully, but it’s a very good story and portrait nonetheless.
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