A review by inciminci
The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison

3.0

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.