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3.31 AVERAGE
3.31 AVERAGE
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
2.5 rounded down.
M John Harrison is someone whose work I always find interesting, and I certainly respect him as a writer, and as much as I appreciated some of this one, I can’t say I particularly enjoyed it. Although despite that – despite myself, almost - something tells me I may end up thinking about it often in the months and years to come.
Shaw is an unhappy man trying to drag himself out of a personal crisis but is incapable of realising how emotionally vacant he is, let alone being able to address it. Victoria is a chirpier and more confident woman, who moves into her deceased mother’s house for a fresh start in a rural town, but remains is in denial about what a big ball of anxiety she is and the fact that there’s precisely nothing ‘fresh’ about her escape. Occasionally the two come together in a fragmentary almost-relationship, but they remain hollow and lost. Meanwhile, all around them yet always out of grasp, something strange is happening to the country; hazy conspiracy theories abound and there are rumours of strange and embryonic aquatic creatures surfacing...
The latter element is a fortean blur that only really exists on the novel’s fringes. Instead, the focus is on two unhappy people living in an unhappy country, and on painting a watery atmosphere that seems to reflect Harrison’s muddled, indistinct, and disenfranchised view of Brexit Britain. You feel that the allegory is certainly there, but it’s difficult to find; the plot almost impossible.
For all its triumphs of illusory disillusionment and painting an unsettling atmosphere that manages to be both foggy and crystalline, there really isn’t much story here, and it’s difficult to pick out any moment that truly mattered. Momentous or strange events whiz past in a matter-of-fact way, barely – if ever – to be referenced again. Every time you think “ah, this will propel things forward!” you're mistaken. It’s not a long novel, but it grows repetitive, and much of the dialogue is deliberately opaque (as it often is in Harrison’s work), as each person seems to converse exclusively in non-sequiturs; each party seemingly replying to one half of a completely different conversation.
And yet, perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps the plot, simultaneously muddled and barely there, and the self-deludedly miserable characters, the lack of any anchor to cling on to, and the depiction of a world that’s at once recognisable while feeling bafflingly alien is all meant to help convey the stultifying, stupefying effect of living in this hellhole country; to be swept up in the confusion of a land that has all but eaten its own identity and still hungers for more. With Harrison you’re never quite sure. Either way, I’m certainly not sorry I read it, despite the unfavourable rating above.
M John Harrison is someone whose work I always find interesting, and I certainly respect him as a writer, and as much as I appreciated some of this one, I can’t say I particularly enjoyed it. Although despite that – despite myself, almost - something tells me I may end up thinking about it often in the months and years to come.
Shaw is an unhappy man trying to drag himself out of a personal crisis but is incapable of realising how emotionally vacant he is, let alone being able to address it. Victoria is a chirpier and more confident woman, who moves into her deceased mother’s house for a fresh start in a rural town, but remains is in denial about what a big ball of anxiety she is and the fact that there’s precisely nothing ‘fresh’ about her escape. Occasionally the two come together in a fragmentary almost-relationship, but they remain hollow and lost. Meanwhile, all around them yet always out of grasp, something strange is happening to the country; hazy conspiracy theories abound and there are rumours of strange and embryonic aquatic creatures surfacing...
The latter element is a fortean blur that only really exists on the novel’s fringes. Instead, the focus is on two unhappy people living in an unhappy country, and on painting a watery atmosphere that seems to reflect Harrison’s muddled, indistinct, and disenfranchised view of Brexit Britain. You feel that the allegory is certainly there, but it’s difficult to find; the plot almost impossible.
For all its triumphs of illusory disillusionment and painting an unsettling atmosphere that manages to be both foggy and crystalline, there really isn’t much story here, and it’s difficult to pick out any moment that truly mattered. Momentous or strange events whiz past in a matter-of-fact way, barely – if ever – to be referenced again. Every time you think “ah, this will propel things forward!” you're mistaken. It’s not a long novel, but it grows repetitive, and much of the dialogue is deliberately opaque (as it often is in Harrison’s work), as each person seems to converse exclusively in non-sequiturs; each party seemingly replying to one half of a completely different conversation.
And yet, perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps the plot, simultaneously muddled and barely there, and the self-deludedly miserable characters, the lack of any anchor to cling on to, and the depiction of a world that’s at once recognisable while feeling bafflingly alien is all meant to help convey the stultifying, stupefying effect of living in this hellhole country; to be swept up in the confusion of a land that has all but eaten its own identity and still hungers for more. With Harrison you’re never quite sure. Either way, I’m certainly not sorry I read it, despite the unfavourable rating above.
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
In this book there are basically two stories intersecting; the story of Shaw, who goes through a sort of life crisis and whose life consists of not much but the visits to his mother who has dementia and lives in a care home. One day he meets Tim who gives him a job in which he needs to sit in front of a computer in a boat house and do stuff for Tim's blog, travel to seemingly random destinations and visit a medium on a regular basis. The second story is the story of Victoria, with whom Tim has a loose affair. She decides to buy a car and move to the country to get away from London, moving into the house of her late mother. There, she finds a truly bizarre community and her life among them is almost like a nightmarish David Lynch movie. And finally, there are many many water-related and aquatic elements everywhere, both in Shaw's and in Victoria's life.
I'm not really sure about this one, I definitely have to ponder on this story more. I read this for my book club and I can't wait to discuss it in April to see what the other people made of it. I have the feeling that it is a weird metaphor for a fairly recent and big event in the history of England, but I can't shake the feeling there's more to this book. What I surely found impressive though, is how even normal landscape descriptions become uncanny and even scary written from Harrison's pen, it is akin to an atmospheric horror movie, but in book form.
I'm not really sure about this one, I definitely have to ponder on this story more. I read this for my book club and I can't wait to discuss it in April to see what the other people made of it. I have the feeling that it is a weird metaphor for a fairly recent and big event in the history of England, but I can't shake the feeling there's more to this book. What I surely found impressive though, is how even normal landscape descriptions become uncanny and even scary written from Harrison's pen, it is akin to an atmospheric horror movie, but in book form.
Harrison is one of those writers who leaves me with a sort of psychic hangover. After reading one of his works, the world is shot with a menacing incomprehensibility. This book gives us a world that doesn't feel very distant from ours. But it's a Chinese Whispers version, where the most mundane things are distorted into unwieldy transformations. But somehow the net effect of this oneiric strangeness is to make it more closely mirror the oddness of being alive.
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
pov: you live in England I guess
The setting was the most entertaining bit for me: as someone who lives in the south east and has family near the Severn, it felt quite familiar.
The plot is pretty confused so best to read this just based of vibes.
I'm not sure if this is horror, but certainly an uncanny read.
The setting was the most entertaining bit for me: as someone who lives in the south east and has family near the Severn, it felt quite familiar.
The plot is pretty confused so best to read this just based of vibes.
I'm not sure if this is horror, but certainly an uncanny read.
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Reading this book is like being in a very small damp room in a surrealist painting and not being sure how you got there but knowing you wanted to be there. The main characters are lost in a very passive way that seems to preclude any conscious actions but just beyond and all around them ‘things’ are happening. It makes for an oddly enjoyable if tense read.
slow-paced