'the dark and rotting heart of the earth'

An A-Z Of Possible Worlds
by A.C. Tillyer

I am going to have to face the fact that at the moment I am a bona fide commuter. For the last few weeks certainly the regularity of my journey into town has placed me next to men in suits tapping away on laptops, power dressed women alternating the application of make-up with Blackberry scrolling and countless people with their faces buried in either one of the Twilight books or the latest Dan Brown. Now don't get me wrong, I love a journey into work, it provides me with at least half an hour of dedicated reading time, but appropriate reading matter can be more problematic. Hauling Bolano's 2666 around for a few weeks was enough to cause serious injury and as John Self commented after finishing Mantell's Wolf Hall "that's a weight off my lap". A combination of that commuter curiosity and a yearning for small digestible narrative lead A C Tillyer to write one of the more intriguing publications I have come across this year: a beautifully produced box containing 26 individually bound stories, one for each letter of the alphabet - from The Archipelago to Zero-Gravity Zone - which come together to make a book difficult to summarise; a journey through the sub-conscious, an insight into what makes us human, brief flashes of insight that may alter the way you look at your journey and the people you share it with for good.



Tillyer manages to recall some of the big names in literature with some of her stories. C is for Casino had me thinking of Borges with its description of a life lottery, D is for Dormitory Town is a Swiftian satire with a Chief Justice who is cared for as a baby whilst his work is willingly done by servants around him and K is for Kingdom is a chilling horror tale worthy of Poe. But these aren't just homages to other writers. Taken as a whole there is a surprising political and philosophical thrust to the stories which tackles notions of power, control and authority. E is for Excavation makes archaeology a political act and demonstrates the importance of resistance to absolute authority. In N is for Neutral State the state in question has become a specialist in torture, used by the warring states that surround it. Sometimes the political\battleground is more personal. I is for Inn could be said to show the malign influence of alcohol on society and in P is for Peep Show Tillyer creates first a strip club popular with its clientele because each female dancer has some form of deformity and then sees how far they would be prepared to watch a woman go. A story both shocking and provocative in a way that strip clubs no longer are.

U is for Underground is one of the most entertaining and unsettling tales, especially for a denizen of the tube like me. In that space where people famously keep themselves to themselves, almost making an effort to avoid any kind of contact with their fellow passengers Tillyer places a breed of vampiric hunters who use that anonymity to disguise their hunting of human prey. They first monitor, then stalk the most ordinary of people (usually men) before surrounding and then driving them away from busy platforms (the rest of the travellers completely unaware with their heads down or buried) to be devoured in secret, the remains carried out in everyday bags and pulverised to make feed for the border plants in their suburban gardens. Looking up from reading a story like that can lend a curious expression to your face as you scan your fellow commuters.

With the booklet format you could select a few to take on your journey each day, each story taking between 5 and 15 minutes to read or if you don't mind some inquisitive (and envious) glances you can carry the entire box with you and dip in as you see fit. The collection is published by Roast Books, an independent publisher which seeks to publish new and interesting fiction in formats which tally with our modern lives. What that means for many I suppose is short books which fit easily into what you carry with you each day; unlike those literary doorstoppers in other words. Each of Tillyer's stories may be slight in size but it would be a mistake to underestimate their themes or ambition and the powerful effect they have as a whole. This review is part of the A-Z blog tour on which the next stop will be author Charles Lambert's 'A place for everything that doesn't fit anywhere else' on Nov 2nd.

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'what is the fourth dimension?'

From Hell
by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell


My graphic education continues with another Alan Moore title and another of his which has been adapted into a terrible film (I say this without having seen it, but the only comments I received from people when reading this book were 'Oh, that was a s**t film'). I think this may be a consistent problem as V for Vendetta will be next on my list and I don't even need to watch that to know it's not much cop. The various volumes of Moore's take on Jack the Ripper were originally published through the 90's and collected together at the end of that decade. In his appendix The Dance of the Gull-Catchers Moore illustrates the impossibility of satisfactorily solving these infamous murders (over 100 suspects have been proposed over time) and beyond that shows that to find a single culprit would be to ignore the fact that almost all killings have a society around them that is as much to blame as the person who wields the weapon itself. That appendix also serves as a potted history of Ripperology (what would Maureen Lipman's BT mum have made of that!), which reminds a modern reader that further theories and ideas have developed in that field since the publication of Moore's book meaning that it lost some of its power for me, feeling a little dated if anything.



That isn't to take away from the book's considerable achievements. The dark black and white drawings maintain a consistently grim outlook, there are some genuinely electrifying moments and for anyone coming to the subject without prior knowledge you couldn't ask for a more accessible medium to take in a lot of information. Or almost. You could certainly never argue that Moore hasn't done his research, there are 42 pages of notes in the first appendix which explain the sources behind many of his decisions, even explaining that some of the backgrounds have been meticulously recreated from the originals. I started trying to read the notes simultaneously with the story but found it was making my progress incredibly slow. Even without the notes themselves some of the early chapters are a little heavy going, reading like research presented as narrative but if you can slog your way through it there is certainly a pay-off nearer the end where the creativity is given a freer rein and the panels begin to open up (or close down) to great effect.

Based heavily on Stephen Knight's theory that the murders were part of a conspiracy to conceal Prince Albert Victor's fathering of an illegitimate child, Moore has no worry about placing Queen Victoria herself in our line of sight, issuing a vague order to her physician Dr William Gull "We leave the means to you, Sir William. We would simply it were done, and done well." It is Gull who leads his driver, and us, on a tour through London, his masonic credentials giving him a knowledge of the pagan symbols and teachings hidden amongst some of London's most famous landmarks and buildings. Chapter 4 is one example of some fairly dryly presented research, the dialogue about as unnatural as you can imagine, but even so Moore manages to build to a moment of drama at the close and with that knowledge now in place he is able to return to it later in the novels closing chapters to far more dramatic effect.

Rather than go into too much detail about the plot I thought I'd highlight some parts of the book that worked really well for me. The black and white artwork was a bit hit and miss for me actually, the inconsistency with faces sometimes making it harder to keep track of who was who, the panels which really excited me were where something different happened. To contrast the different lifestyles of Gull and Polly Nicholls in chapter 5 there are suddenly only three long panels to each page; Nicholls' presented in the style we have become used to, Gull's softened like pastel drawings or watercolours. This is the only time that the artwork changes significantly and it can't help but catch your eye. The rest of the time the eye-grabbing effects are achieved by playing with panel size (they're always rectangular though) or by throwing in something you don't expect. The brutality of the final murder of Mary Kelly makes chapter 1o one of the book's stand-out sections. There is a rhythm built up by the regularity of each nine-panel page and when that rhythm is interrupted by a larger panel it has a strong effect. On top of that it is here that Moore and Campbell achieve their greatest coup de theatre; Gull's delusions making manifest that fourth dimension which has been posed throughout the book, showing that time is a human illusion and that all times co-exist in eternity. This dramatic effect is perhaps only topped by the audacious final chapter where Moore manages to unite many of his themes and present a daring conclusion to his meditation on evil, power and death.



The thing that I find fascinating about Moore is the process by which he creates the story lines, dialogue and presentation of his books (in collaboration with each artist to a certain extent I'm sure) without making a single drawing himself. His extensive notes are infamous and on Eddie Campbell's blog it is possible to see some of the original scripts together with the artwork he created here and here. It is a fascinating insight into one of the most creative minds I've come across.

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'A father, after all, is a lot for a thing to be.'

Legend Of A Suicide
by David Vann

As the title suggests this book from David Vann isn't so much a single narrative but a collection of stories (one really a novella) inspired by a single event. The root of this comes from his own life, his father having committed suicide in 1980, an event that was presumably earth-shattering. From those shards Vann has reflected in different ways on the effects of that suicide, particularly on those people left behind in its wake. For the reader there is a slightly unsettling sensation as each story develops; the names of the principal characters remain the same but the circumstances and facts in each case seem to be slightly different - this ensures that the book remains resolutely a piece of fiction rather than a factual exhumation. This fragmented approach is incredibly effective for focusing attention on particular themes and also provides the book as a whole with a truly jaw-dropping shock, slap bang in the middle, which I wouldn't dream of revealing in this review.

Looking quickly at the stories first, Ichthyology shows the choices and decisions Roy witnesses his father make that lead toward his suicide. Whilst his father pursues various ill-advised ventures on the water Roy is living with his mother far away in California. His father's fishing boat (on which he puts the gun to his head) contrasts with the fish tank that Roy keeps at home and the final image of a fly 'mired in the water, sending off his million tiny ripples of panic' serves to highlight how far those shock waves can travel. Rhoda looks at Roy's relationship with his stepmother, a woman whose unknown quality makes her so intriguing. The eyelid of her right eye is drooped, never opening but also never quite closing, a sight which on closer inspection Roy realises 'made her terribly beautiful.' In A Legend Of Good Men whilst Roy's widowed mother goes through a series of unsuccessful relationships he develops his own relationship with that most American of accessories: the gun. It begins harmlessly enough (if such a thing is possible) but after shooting out street lights and stop signs Roy then breaks into his own house, shooting out windows and doors. Vann turning this cry for attention into something personal as Roy sits on the porch, waiting for the police to arrive, hoping that one of his mother's past suitors will be one of them.

Roy is 30 years old in Ketchikan where he returns to 'the place my dead father had first gone astray, the place where this father and his suicide and his cheating and his lies and my pity for him, also, might be put to rest.' What he actually hopes to do is meet the woman with whom his father had had an affair, 'to talk with her and maybe tell her who I was'. His life having been so shaped by this one event, or to be more accurate the stories surrounding the event, the narrative he has made for himself, what he is looking for is some kind of revenge. What though, if things are not as he has imagined.

The real act of revenge though comes in Sukkwan Island, the novella at the centre of this book. It comes in two parts; the first seen from Roy's point of view, the second his father Jim's. In an attempt at bonding Jim takes Roy with him to this remote island in Alaska where he has a house. Vann's descriptive prose is extraordinary in this section, creating the vast impenetrable wilderness that surrounds them, the harsh weather, the constant threat of danger from both the elements and wildlife with whom they share the island. Whilst the house in its dilapidated state presents the first challenge for father and son the real danger to them both is the mental state of Roy's suicidal father. Ill prepared and irresponsible, incapable of caring for himself let alone another, and exposed in this setting to the harshest possible challenges there is something primal about the atmosphere which reminded me of Cormac McCarthy amongst others and had me gripped from the first page to the last.

Over the next two days, in the rain, they cut the poles for the roof and a smaller second roof. They sawed the lengths and stripped off the branches with a hatchet, Roy watching this father with his grim unshaven face when he worked, the cold rain dripping off the end of his nose. He seemed as solid then as a figure carved from stone, and all his thoughts as immutable, and Roy could not reconcile this father with the other, the one who wept and despaired and had nothing about him that could last. Though Roy had memory, it seemed nonetheless that whatever father he was with at the time was the only father that could be, as if each in its time could burn away the others completely.

There is something so sad about the lack of connection between father and son, not just in this section but throughout the book. On Sukkwan Island Roy realises that this trip, designed to throw the two of them closer together, feels no different from any of their previous vacations and he wonders whether that will change. So as not to ruin anything I will say no more about a story which is as powerful as anything I have read this year, the year before that and possibly ever and hope that that is enough to pique your interest to find out why.

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'every word seemed a morsel'

A Gate At The Stairs
by Lorrie Moore

Famed for her short fiction this is Moore's first novel for 15 years. You might have thought that the publishers would have made slightly more of that rather than saddling it with one of the more hideous covers it has been my misfortune to confront this year, a bright assault that looks like it should produce one of those 3-D images of a dinosaur if you stared at it long enough. It was only my skimming of Geoff Dyer's glowing review that convinced me it was worth sampling my first taste of Moore's work and whilst I can't be quite as fulsome in my praise as he was she is certainly one hell of a writer as the copious post-it notes that now run through my copy attest. There are so many quotable lines, images and jokes that I shall have to be careful that I don't just copy the whole thing out (how can you resist the description of a fortune cookie as "A short paper nerve baked in an ear"), but it certainly encourages me, as it should you, to take a look at her shorter fiction.

Pitched as a 'post-9/11' novel, Moore places the action in an America still learning to deal with those attacks and getting prepared for another war in the Middle East. It is in America's Midwest that we meet Tassie Keltjin, 'half-Jewish' farmer's daughter, as she heads to University in Troy, considered so smug by its provincial neighbours that they joke it is a place where they 'drink their own bath water'. Tassie compares this change to the awakening of a priest-child in Colombia she read about, who having been raised in the dark and given only stories rather than experience of the world, emerges into it in a 'perpetual holy condition of bedazzlement and wonder'. Then comes her punchline:

The ancient cave, of course, had produced a mystic; my childhood had produced
only me.

Leaving behind a brother whose lack of options in life have him considering a life in the military, and a father concentrated on his speciality vegetables, Tassie is soon immersed in college life where her courses in Sufism and wine-tasting have appropriately punning titles, and even finding time for her first forays into romance (of which more later). To support her studies Tassie seeks out work in childcare and is taken on by Sarah, owner of an absurdly posh restaurant in town (which uses Keltjin potatoes). Sarah is looking to adopt a child and eventually she and partner Edward take a young mixed-race toddler, Mary, into their home. Moore has already softened us up with a one-liner on race earlier in the book by giving Tassie's mixed-race friend Rachel the moniker 'Inter-Rachel'. She then takes things much further, poking fun at the right-on middle class values of Sarah and Ed, who set up a support group for other mixed race parents, their increasingly ridiculous utterances caught by Tassie as she looks after their children upstairs.

Tassie has a narrative voice which is a little problematic. Written from a point in the future there is a wisdom and maturity which is more than would be expected from a girl of her age. This is all well and good until that perceptiveness intrudes on the present-tense thoughts of Tassie. When she accompanies Sarah to the home of Mary's present carers she not only spots that it is the teenage daughter who has been fulfilling the role of mother, but also that this teenage girl has 'secretly, quietly' encouraged Mary to call her "Mama". That level of perception doesn't ring true in the present moment, especially from a girl of Tassie's age, despite her intelligence. These confusions or inconsistencies are a small price to pay however for a narrator who is sometimes naive, sometimes aware, intelligent, funny and trying to make the best job she can of growing up.

Much has been said before of Moore's humour and its possible intrusiveness into her writing leading to 'gag-fatigue'. There are many different laughs in this book: Deprecating ('My father had one day stood on the porch and flung his arms out and said, "Someday kids, all this will be yours." But his knuckles had hit the porch supports. Even the porch wasn't that big.'), clever (I would imagine that ergonomic meant 'thereforish' ), indignant (in response to Sarah's carmelized sage finished with hand-raked Norman sea salt: 'So this is what Americans were busying themselves with in Normandy now that it had been liberated from the Nazis: hand-raking sea salt. Soldiers' tears shipped thousands of miles and sprinkled on a fried leaf. Look D-Day in the eye and tell it that!'), and irresistible (Bread with 'a powdery blue mold that would have made a lovely eyeshadow for a showgirl - perhaps one who also needed penicillin.'). Only occasionally do the gags feel unwelcome, which is an achievement in a book which deals with adoption, race, war and other serious themes which I won't declare for fear of spoiling the rest of the plot. The one jarring moment is not of humour but rather the opposite, when Moore develops Tassie's love interest into an overtly (and unconvincing) post-9/11 plotline. It feels unnecessary when elsewhere in the book she has shown so effectively, and far more subtly, the dislocation of the characters.

The people in this house, I felt, and I included myself were like characters each from a different grim and gruesome fairy tale. None of us was in the same story. We were all grotesques, and self-riveted, but in separate narratives, and so our interactions seemed weird and richly meaningless, like the characters in a Tennesee Willliams play, with their bursting, unimportant, but spellbindingly mad speeches.

It is these aspects of the book: the relationships that never connect, the things not said, the pauses, the gaps, that are the real success of this novel. The division that was clear in how people responded to 9/11 has been one of its lasting shocks. Moore shows how large the small gaps between us can become and for the characters in this novel, the attempt to make the family unit work is one which falters. It is worth noting that the titular gate, which we find at Sarah's house, is broken.

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Sukilove - Static Moves

I know what you've been thinking: When's he going to review some more Belgian indie-rock? Well, don't worry, the time has come, and how could I resist the opportunity to review an album frontman Pascal Deweze described as "homo-erotic rock without the glitter"? Sukilove formed in Antwerp in 2002 and have gained a reputation at home for twisted pop and textured songwriting. When Mojo magazine commissioned a Beatles cover project, Sukilove contributed Love You To and the band have also enjoyed support slots with David Bowie. Their new album is available through Jezus Factory Records and the band will be playing some live dates in the UK between 28th November and 5th December.

So, what does twisted pop and layered songwriting mean? Well, I know I keep making this comparison but there are plenty of moments that sound like Radiohead on this album and Deweze's voice inhabits the same kind of register as Thom Yorke although he seldom takes the opportunity to break free or use more of his register. New Beginning begins with a bouncy bass which isn't a million miles away from sounding like a slower version of that which underpins the theme tune to Flash Gordon. There are layered vocals and a melody which manages to sound positive and twisted at the same time. There is good use of haunting piano lines on tracks like 4AM but the backing vocals are never quite fully wedded to the rest of the track. Rebel rocks out with power chords and the kind of amplified bowed-strings that made Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds soundtrack such a prog-rock powerhouse. There's something very dramatic about a track that has so many sections to it; think Bohemian Rhapsody or Paranoid Android. You need something gentler after that onslaught and Sugareyes is just that, still multi-sectioned but progressing slowly to its layered conclusion. This is certainly music that doesn't intend to leave you short-changed, each track often bursting with ideas, whether or not these always come together successfully is another matter. Memory As A Skull is a bit of a mess for example and contains a strange section where Deweze sounds as though he is trying to clear a frog in his throat.

First single Choose Your Gods has a nice melody underpinned by a bass line which threatens something else. This comes in the middle when jangled guitars are at odds to the melody and at the end when they combine with that bass. The video below gives you a chance to hear it and if the contradicting elements aren't to your taste then this may not be the album for you.



By persevering into the second half of the album there are some real moments of interest. Fear, a track which doesn't begin with much promise develops nicely with Deweze showing that he has far more in the tank vocally than we had imagined as he hollers the refrain "We're all just meat/Waiting to die". Contemplaying has an interesting 2/2 rhythm that makes the track trip along with menace and the album closes with Leave Me Alone, perhaps the most overtly Radiohead track, which combines powerful guitars with gentle piano and soft vocals. It's certainly not a dull album, If Deweze could make more use of his full range and try and control some of the songwriting so that tracks don't become overwhelmed by too many ideas then Sukilove could be capable of producing something really special.

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