O.R.S.: Two middle aged tangential friends, Shaw and Victoria, pass through their days on the periphery of London life as increasingly strange events occur, challenging their concept of reality. It is told through two perspectives.
I feel like the reviewers of M John Harrison don’t quite know what to do with him, don’t quite always know what is happening, and so, slightly intimidated by the clear talents and not wanting to look a fool, often shower him in praise. Not unlike, perhaps, the reaction some music critics have to John Zorn, except English and less Talmudic and more Crowley. Although similar lovely hair. As I was reading Sunken Lands, which for me was as much a tone poem as a novel, I felt this Venn diagram overlap with, as others have mentioned, the Weird (capital W,) uniquely English wetness of Iain Sinclair (psychogeography!,) grey muddy obtuseness of Kazuo Ishiguro’s more internal novels or even dreamlike strangeness of Mervyn Peake and Susanne Clarke–as well as the trans-Atlantic occult menace of Tim Powers or Magick of John Crowley (other Crowley.) And there are doubtless many others who Harrison is even closer to that just escaped my mind. So if you like any of those, you’ll probably enjoy Harrison. Maybe even start with Light. In the beginning of this short novel, I relished every turn of phrase, the signature pause-then-off-the-cuff dialogue of the characters, towards the end, like most tone poems or Terrence Malick films, it felt a bit meandering and denouement soft. Most probably on purpose, and the author can write, but it does end softly.
219p
If On a Winter's Night, a Traveler... 