Latest Features

The ultraviolet Catastrophe

Being a regular guy — that is, being downtrodden by the capitalist system as opposed to merely heterosexual and (possibly) patriarchal too — Hugh spent the best part of Christmas Eve alone at the Space, inputting the last lot of scientific data (which was not data science, or even rocket science, but still just as boring). At eight PM he was finally ready to log-off and head back through the dark but still partly leafy streets. Despite the Berlin Senate’s demands that the Hypothetical Ramessesium be immediately removed, the city still bore numerous traces of it: broken logos buzzing round the dirtier corners and continuing to remind everyone that yes, Lex Ramesses really was the master of their universe, while also revealing — or partially hinting at — the other, possible corners of it that he would one day rule as well.

Read an extract from The Ultraviolet Catastrophe by Susan Finlay.

Jewel Box

No one knows why anyone else is here. The Swiss consul, for starters, is searching for his ex-daughter. The country, he says, is remote; others say that eventually, her mien spectral, she may well return. Some give instructions: For proper aftercare, boil your ear in salt water for fifteen minutes, twice a day. If excess itching occurs, drown a gibbous. If you are struck by the need to vomit, or find yourself coughing uncontrollably, it is far more polite to excuse yourself than attempt to quell in front of your party—gaping with fear, alarm, eyes eyebrowless—the tempest in your solar plexus. Two reminisce suggestively about the taking of the jewels; gloved, by night with torch and spear.

A short story by Shea Hellenthorpe.

The Rhyl Deal

At the outset, a taxi accidentally exits a car park through the entrance, thereby producing a remainder — “a surplus piece of paper” — in the shape of a ticket that preserves its potentiality by remaining in abeyance: “the unsurrendered ticket, paper scrap that had purloined itself, slipped through the architecture of the system it was meant to serve”. There are other similar intervals — interregna — in the novel where the order of things is subtly subverted.

Andrew Gallix on The Rhyl Poster by Tom McCarthy.

A Literary Action

My ‘novel’, The Coast of Everything, was published on June 16th (Bloomsday, cheekily enough) and in fairly short order had accumulated a number of lengthy reviews in prominent places that exhibited a conspicuously uniform hostility and (the author would suggest) misunderstanding. It was almost as if a memo had gone around — indeed, one reviewer explicitly suggests that one at least should have. But conspiracy theories are not necessary to explain what I see as groupthink. It wasn’t really my book (as I believe the following essay will demonstrate) that was reviewed — it was ‘this sort of thing’.

Guillermo Stitch responds to his critics.

The Coast of Everything

‘You must choose’, Samuel Beckett wrote in his novel Molloy, ‘between the things not worth mentioning and those even less so. For if you set out to mention everything you would never be done.’ For Beckett as a young author, James Joyce was the writer of ‘everything’ whose intoxicating maximalism compelled him to go in a direction that eventually led to the sequence of novels which began with Molloy and, by The Unnamable, had distilled to a babbling voice trying to say ‘I’. Despite all appearances, from title and length to its sprawling narrative, rampant intertextuality and everyman heroes, Guillermo Stitch’s The Coast of Everything – a captivating, sometimes maddening novels-within-a-novel about the future of fiction – is not the Joycean Gesamtkunstwerk it seems. It is a Beckettian book, one that knows storytelling is an incessant need and that narrative shape is pure artifice.

W. J. Davies reviews The Coast of Everything by Guillermo Stitch.

We’re Nobody’s Children: David Bowie and Existentialism

Bowie’s life and work was an act of supreme creativity but also one of ‘decreation’. His approach throughout his career was to adopt personas that provided spaces for his listeners to reflect on their situation and create for themselves a more authentic life. His songwriting was an act of self-effacement, an attempt to get himself out of the way, but he then killed off these many ‘selves’ and, through stripping himself away in this fashion, Sharpe states that he was ‘choosing difference over identity, otherness over self’. So true.

Richard Skinner reviews We’re Nobody’s Children: David Bowie and Existentialism by Alex Sharpe.

Killing Time

When I became a ghost, I kept going but the world went slack. The living drifted like continents. Sneezes bloomed slower than the corpse flower at the Chicago Botanic Gardens, which is where the blood clot got me. I quickly gave up on all that edification and headed south to Port St. Joe to see about killing my husband Swett.

At first, I passed time floating through cars, tapping French fries out of passengers’ gaping fish-mouths. Outside Nashville, I drifted into a hooptie in the eons-long process of crumpling into a semi. The driver’s ghost, newly released, took one look at me and fled.

A short story by Meghan Williams.

Reasons Not to Bathe

Things got sticky this week, Stephen told her, when the man he called the Russian went into the bathroom for private ablutions and the glass eye he took out to wash slipped through his fingers and rolled into the toilet stall. The first thing anyone heard was the unlockable bathroom door swinging open with unusual force. Then the surge of limbs pumping and a sense of their pluming wake as the panicked one-eyed man charged fast to the nurses’ station, holding the eye aloft between two fingers like a bon bon.

Excuse me. This requires antiseptic rinse. Excuse me, said the Russian.

Stephen was watching from where he always stood, near the nurses, flush against the wall.

The nurse made a gesture at the man with her chin, up and out and then back down to her phone call, to register the red fleshy backdrop where an eye should have been, the surprisingly large white globe and glassy brown iris pointed her way.

A short story by Mary Byrne.

Animal Nightlife

It immediately immerses the reader in a world of magical realism, layered language and music. We meet Ravi, Sean, and Vikram, three childhood friends from South London whose shared history binds them through deep loyalty and strong, albeit typical male-friendship kind of affection. They flock together like birds of a feather, quite literally, because one of the curious secrets they share is that all of them possess wings.

Elte Rauch reviews Animal Nightlife by Koushik Banerjea.

A Trip to Ripple

In the early evening we decided to head to Ripple itself for something to eat. I wore a shirt from Boden so as to blend in with the locals, then wondered if I was too smart; I shouldn’t have attempted the first nor worried about the second. We walked down a single-tracked lane between high hedgerows and trees, past a small complex of renovated red-brick outbuildings called The Granary and The Stables. On the B road was a short row of new builds and the village pub. The pub was called The Railway. The front room was full of boomers in trousers in every shade of red, and as we entered we were given the once/twice-over. The people behind the bar were as friendly as it’s possible to be without giving off so much as a joule of warmth. We had prawn cocktail, squid rings, steak and a burger.

By Charlie Hill.

Police, Punk, and Crosswords: An Interview with Tony White

I think that’s a reality of policing. Not just undercover policing. The job requires a kind of professional mask, a professional, and procedural carapace that an experienced police officer will adjust according to the situation. They’re well trained in such procedures. And I wanted to reflect on that kind of life. To come back to Javier Cercas’ idea of the ‘blind spot’ briefly, undercover police, whatever they were doing, were putting themselves in positions of extreme risk: risk of discovery, violence, and in some cases, risk of death. And they were also breaking the law. But they were doing these terrible things and putting themselves at risk because – in their eyes – they were the good guys. Rex, I’m sure, would think of himself as one of the good guys. But the evidence doesn’t bear that up, you know?

Tony White interviewed about his new novel, Phantom at the Feast, by James Riley.

Drug and Prison Stories: An Interview with William S. Hayes

It was in prison that I began to write regularly and it was often smut. Penthouse Forum type shit. After doing time in numerous facilities, and getting clean, I began to think about writing more. Two friends had written books — American Junkie by Tom Hansen and American Demon by Jack Grisham — and after reading them I knew it was time. I began posting little pieces on social media and my friends told me to write it down before I forgot it. So I did. I was working graveyard and put it down on four notebooks — pen to paper. I’ve always loved drug and prison stories and I knew with my experiences I had plenty of material.

William S. Hayes interviewed by John Wisniewski.