GOTHIC STORIES MICK JACKSON Ten Sorry Tales (Faber) 0000
How should this be read? As a children's book that adults will enjoy or a book
for adults with childlike qualities? While it’s difficult to decide, ultimately it doesn’t matter when you’re faced with such a delightful collection of stories.
Reminiscent of Tim Burton’s illustrated book of poems The Melancholy Death
of Oyster Bay, it manages to be fantastical and moving in equal measure. For while posing under the guise of throwaway contemporary fairy tales, the real strength in Mick Jackson's set is the emotion that underpins each yarn.
There is no doubting the imagination or the very black sense of humour that is indelibly marked through each, but it is the underlying sense of pathos and mourning which provides the launch pad for each of these flights of fancy and affords the book its emotional resonance, lifting it above other examples of the ilk. Like Edgar Allan Poe writing fairy tales, each has a tell tale heart. ‘A row-boat in the cellar’ looks at the loss of purpose felt in retirement and ‘Neither hide nor hair’ leaves one running through all those points in your life that you walked too far away from to turn back.
From tales of revenge-driven hermits to a junior Rip Van Winkle, each story holds you in its grasp and lays you down gently at the end. Defying
categorisation and providing dark pleasures for all ages, Jackson may just be
about to fill a Dahl-shaped hole. (Gordon Eldrett)
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Reviews
COMIC NOVEI CHRISTOPHER NICHOLSON The Fattest Man in America
(Constable and Robinson) 0
Smalltown America has long been a breeding ground for weird and wonderful characters. making it a fertile setting for novelists. English author Christopher Nicholson has decided to set his debut novel in )ust Such an enwronment. in Texas where Mickey. an obese man virtually incapable of moving. sets abOiit trying to establish himself as the fattest man in the country. and attempts to
make some money Out Of it.
Sadly, Nicholson's style and prose are both utterly lacking in energy, verve or gusto of any sort, making this a stOry that meanders tediously from one wholly underwhelming bland anecdote to the next. Billed a dark comedy.
The Fattest Man in America is neither black nor funny, instead painting a rather grey picture of a thorOughly boring character (extraordinary s:ze aside) and does so Without a Single laugh in its 250 pages. (DOug Johnstonel
SOCIAL DRAMA JOHN ABERDEIN Amande's Bed
(Thirsty BookS) COO.
Amande Bed begins with a suicide and ends With a scattering of ashes. and in between moves swiftly through a few months in north-east 19505 Scotland with its attendant political and industrial unrest. The book is as much an exploration of language as it is of a period in Our history. John Aberdein's writing is nuanced and playful: droplets of water become 'brief pearls' and washing machines run a cycle of 'affablack.
stillaffablack. naeasblackasitWis. and stillnithinlikeclean'.
While it may often be Surreal. it's never incomprehenSible: there's a temperance and control abOut his writing which give a sense that there is hardly a superfluous word. Overwhelmingly, it's a book of grand dreams in little lives and of tragedy Only a single breath from delight. Aberdein‘s politics are never far from the Surface. but With the humour and VibranCy of his characters. he has done far more than Just make them personal: he has brOught them to life. (Katie Gould)
PERSONAL TALE VALERIE MASON- JOHN
Borrowed Body (Serpent's Tail) 0.
Valerie Mason-John's ambitious debut novel is a highly personal and unflinching aCCOunt of the tortured psyche. fleeting
friendships and shifting allegiances of a child growmg up in care. Through her Childhood and adolescence in a Dr Barnardo's Village. later living with her abusive African mother and finally experienCing street and bOrstal life. Pauline Charles is Subject to institutionalised racism. physical abuse and neglect. Throughout she does battle with personal demons and struggles to come to terms With herself in an unenlightened 1970s Britain that has no place for her.
Written in the first person, an uneaSy read is exacerbated by iriconSistenCies in Mason- John's representation of childhood vernaCuIar. though Pauline's st0ry of brutality and Spirituality is nevertheless one of the v0iceless that should be heard. Fierce. frank and honest. Borrowed Body is a worthy if flawed window on the untold story of the troubled and unwanted.
(Mark Edmundson) PSYCl lOLOGlCAL. THRILL ER ROSLUND; HELLSTROM
The Beast
(Little. Brown) .00 AlthOugh the titular ‘beast' of this book is the escaped paedophile and Child-killer Bernt Lund who catalyses most of the action, it can also be interpreted as the consuming hatred which he inspires in everyone he affects. l ike that of regular guy Frederik Steffansson, his life already blighted by Lund. or Vicious. 'peddo'assaultmg con Dickybird. Or the baying masses who treat Frederik when he‘s taken action against Lund — as a hero. defying law and order to do so. Think like this. we come to see. and
LA» .liii‘.
everyone gets hurt. Authors Anders Roslund (an investigative journalist in his native Sweden) and Berge Hellstrbm (a reformed Criminal) have carved a book which is as dark and unflinching as the Subject suggests. stuffed With tortured characters and nasty language. Although the tWist is slightly predictable. its bravery is affecting, but mainly it's the translation which detracts. coming across as occasionally too stilted or academic to entirely relate. (Dairid Pollock)
ALSO PUBLISHED
Janey Godley Handstands in the Dark The tough-talkin' comic unleashes her no-holds barred autobiography. about her harsh childhood. Ebury.
A Roger Ekirch At Day's Close A true histOry of night-time involving blanket fairs. night freaks. sun suckers and moon cursers. Weldenfe/d 8 Nico/son.
Clare Sambriook Hide and Seek Love. loss and survival in a novel about a nine- year-old boy whose world is torn apart by a tragedy at Legoland. Canongate. Christopher Frayling Sergio Leone A glossy look at the life and career of the man behind the spaghetti Western with contributions from messrs Scorsese. Eastwood and Morricone. Thames 8 Hudson. Corinne Meier Hello Laziness The book which took France by storm hits the UK as we get the slacker's guide to just about surviving at the workplace. Orion.
'.i A Bit. i5: THE LIST 31