Cove by Cynan Jones

 

112 Pages

You can buy "Cove"...Here

You can follow Cynan Jones...Here

• The Blurb...

Out at sea, in a sudden storm, a man is struck by lightning. When he wakes, injured and adrift on a kayak, his memory of who he is and how he came to be there is all but shattered. Now he must pit himself against the pain and rely on his instincts to get back to shore, and to the woman he dimly senses waiting for his return. With its taut narrative and its wincingly visceral portrait of a man locked in an uneven struggle with the forces of nature, this is a powerful new work from one of the most distinctive voices in British fiction.

• Our Review..

This is a beautifully written short story. The plot is minimal. i.e man on kayak at sea gets struck by lightning, tries to make it back to shore. Clearly inspired by The Old Man and The Sea. But the description of this simple plot is exceptional. It feels akin to an academic exercise in literal descriptive techniques.

First of all, after the lightning strike, the author splits the narrative into two parts. The physical battle for survival and the attempt to rescue his mental capabilities. After the lightning strike as well as the bodily injuries, his memory has been wiped. All he is left with are the instinct to survive and the merest hint of a ghost of a memory of a woman.

The writing format is short separated sentences or paragraphs so that you are hit with point after point in rapid succession. It's like being machine gunned.

The prose however is not straight forward and simple. It is lyrical and opaque. It has numerous similes and metaphors, which I love. It makes the reader work. The reader has to decide whether the sentence is real or imagined or even symbolic. The writing style is much more to the Dylan Thomas end of the writing scale than say Cormac McCarthy.

Which brings me to another point. I began reading this in my usual way, quickly and business like but the writing is just so rich and poetic that I found myself slowing down, savouring every word and reading aloud to feel the rhythms. 

Why then only 3 stars? I'm afraid the end let it down a little for me. It just seemed to happen abruptly and a little to ambiguously. I just don't like the endings to be even a little open to interpretation. 

All in all a visceral, descriptive short story about how fleeting life in physical and spiritual form can be.

 

• Selected Quotes..

"He let the light in bit by bit, as if sipping it with his eye,"

"The smell of the jumper triggers something, but it is like a piano key hitting strings that are gone."

"He saw beneath him a flock of jellyfish, like negligees."

"If you disappear you will grow into a myth for them. You will exist only as absence. If you get back, you will exist as a legend."

"He had a sense, out here, of peace. He could feel not only the proximity of the bay but a proximity to himself. He thought: Why do we stop doing the things we enjoy and the things we know are good for us?"

• If You Like This Then You May Like...

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas (for poetic type prose)

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

• About The Author...

Cynan Jones was born in 1975 near Aberaeron, Wales where he now lives and works. He is the author of five short novels, The Long Dry, Everything I Found on the Beach, Bird, Blood, Snow, The Dig, and Cove.

 

He has been longlisted and shortlisted for numerous prizes and won a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award 2007, a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize 2014, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize 2015 and the BBC National Short Story Award 2017.

 

His work has been published in more than twenty countries, and short stories have appeared on BBC Radio 4 and in a number of anthologies and publications including Granta Magazine and The New Yorker. He also wrote the screenplay for an episode of the BAFTA-winning crime series Hinterland, and Three Tales, a collection of stories for children.

 

Cynan Jones was the 2008 Scritture Giovani Hay Festival Fellow, has tutored extensively for Literature Wales, the Arvon Foundation, and other writing bodies, and wrote and presents CBC's online Writing Short Stories course. For a number of years he was the RLF Writing Fellow at Aberystwyth University and in 2019 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

 

His latest work, available now from Granta books, is Stillicide, a collection of twelve stories commissioned by BBC Radio 4 that aired over the summer 2019. 

(from cynanjones.com)

A Stranger from the Storm by William Burton McCormick

 

⭐⭐⭐⭐

You can buy Stranger from the Storm...Here

You can find out more about William Burton McCormick...Here

The Blurb...

The year is 1900. The port city of Odessa on the Black Sea is being terrorized by a brutal killer called the Specter. With five people already dead, the murderer promises more.

One family, the Karadopoulinas, run a boarding house. Sisters Tasia and Eleni feel certain the killer is a scarred, shambling Londoner who took lodging with them one night during a thunderstorm. Furtive and threatening, Henry Humble, stalks Odessa’s labyrinth of interlocking courtyards and foggy docks at night, armed with weapons and skeleton keys.

As the body count rises, so do the questions...
Who is the mysterious figure haunting the catacombs below the streets of Odessa?
Why won’t Eleni’s police constable sweetheart investigate?
Who will be the next to die?

A Victorian-style murder mystery with elements of horror, adventure, and Hitchcockian black humor. "

My Review...

A Stranger from the Storm is a novella, that is easy and quick to read. It is unusual in its setting. I haven't read many books set in Eastern Europe and none set in Odessa in 1900, so that was an enjoyable first. The American author clearly knows his way around Europe.

The plot centres around twins Eleni and Anastasia who live and work in their impoverished widowed, mother's boarding house. One night during a terrible storm a strange and mysterious man comes to stay. At the same time there is an ongoing spate of child murders in the city. Are the two connected? Eleni and Anastasia get drawn in to the sinister riddle.

False trails and red herrings abound and the plot takes a left turn mid way. The main characters all change to a greater or lesser extent throughout the book, which is far more interesting than a plethora of stable straight line characters

There is a wicked sense of humour in this enjoyable slightly macabre tale which contrast nicely along side the mist shrouded docks and impending sense of threat hanging in the air.

There is a slight whiff of Fritz Lang's "M" with Peter Lorre, Conan Doyle's Victorian era stories, Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and most intriguingly the Coen brothers Fargo

A Beautifully balanced slightly creepy unusual tale in an unusual setting in an unusual era. 

Selected Quotes...

"Well, if you learned the English language from Welsh miners it's a miracle you can speak a word."

"He's got a hideous scar, Mama," whispered Eleni. Mother arranged her drenched hair, peering into the looking glass perched on the bookshelf. "Eleni, it's not the body that matters but the soul." "Well, his soul better be pretty good."

"He's so much sweeter to Mother, isn't he?" "Maybe he fancies her. What kind of name is 'Henry?'" "One of their kings." "What'd he do?" "Killed all his wives."

"Play the music, Tasia, not simply the notes."

He glanced out the window. "Well, we shouldn't feel too safe and cozy. An unsettled mind may seek new challenges, don't you think?" "That's why we bolt the doors, Mister…" "Mr. Henry Humble, at your service."

About the Author

William Burton McCormick was born in Maryland and raised in Nevada. He has lived in seven countries including Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and Russia solely for the purpose of writing.

William graduated from Brown University with degrees in Ancient Studies and Computer Science and earned an MA in Novel Writing from the University of Manchester. He has won awards in the production of entertainment and educational software, co-owned a company to reduce junk e-mail, and worked as an executive recruiter in the Washington D.C. area.

He was elected a Hawthornden Fellow in 2013.

William's fiction has appeared in "The Saturday Evening Post," "Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine," "Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine," "Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine," and "Over My Dead Body!" He is a Shamus, Derringer and Claymore awards finalist and member of Mystery Writers of America, the Crime Writers Association and International Thriller Writers.

The Diamond Device by M.H. Thaung

 

⭐⭐⭐

You can buy The Diamond Device...Here

You can follow MH Thaung...Here

The Blurb...

After diamond power promises to replace steam, an unemployed labourer and a thieving noble unite to foil an international plot and avert a war.

Alf Wilson resents the new technology that cost him hibuy s factory job, especially as his clockwork leg bars him from army enrolment. He daren’t confess his unemployment to his overbearing mother. Desperate over the rent, he ends up in a detention cell with a hangover.

Impoverished Lord Richard Hayes maintains his expensive parliamentary seat by a mixture of charm and burglary. During a poorly planned break-in, he inadvertently witnesses a kidnapping. To cap it all, the police arrest him for the crime. At least he's using a fake identity. The real criminals make off with not just the professor who discovered diamond power, but her plans for a diamond-fuelled bomb.

When Rich encounters Alf in the neighbouring cell, he sees an opportunity to keep his noble reputation intact. He persuades Alf he's a secret agent who needs an assistant. This chance association will take them to the oddest locations. But law-abiding Alf’s first assignment? Break Rich out of jail.

My Review...

So... my first steampunk novel. 

What is steampunk? Basically a tale set in a fictionalised Victorian type era with some wacky technology eg a diamond powered, clockwork prosthetic leg or steam powered handsome cabs.

There are several plotlines including an aristocrats parents go missing, a culture clash between working class Alf and upper class Rich (who is actually so poor he resorts to theiving), a kidnapping of a prominent scientist, industrial espionage, a maid who may be more than she seems, a cold War between two countries, so there is a lot going on. In fact on occasion I felt like a lion trying to pick out one wildebeest out of the herd to chase down.

The characters were an interesting ensemble. Alf seemed honourable but not too savvy and Rich seems savvy but not too honourable. Also they don't particularly get along. A partnership of inconvenience from across the social divide.

I found the reasons why Rich's parents abandoned him without resources to be odd as was his nonchalance when he finds out.

The relationship between the scientist and her husband was an odd one as well. She seemed caring to others while he did not, and yet he was devoted her.

The strength of this novel was the world building. The author has created a vibrant environment that is very familiar yet very different at the same time.

There is a sense of adventure in the narrative rather than fear, or impending doom and while the multi plots may be a problem for an old git like me, I feel that there is plenty to capture the attention. In addition to the above reasons I believe the pace of the book and the author's world building aptitude may lend themselves to a YA audience.

Selected Quotes...

"Silhouetted in the doorway were two figures. One was female, her curves beginning the slow decline towards sagginghood."

"But the amused dimples and long dark lashes brought back memories of passing notes in class. And trading boiled sweets. And imaginative dreams."

"While nobles might invest, or direct, or be consulted for advice, they didn’t actually work for pay. That distinguished them from the lower classes,"

"It was clearly a misunderstanding, and these tabloid papers don't always concern themselves with accuracy.”“That’s understandable, but they’re worryingly influential, even among our enlightened citizens."

About the Author...

M.H. Thaung was born in Scotland and has moved progressively southwards throughout her career. She now works in a biomedical science research institute in London, England. She loves her job and academic writing (where she publishes as C. Thaung). She also enjoys wondering "What if...?" and seeing what might happen in alternate worlds. Her creative writing is split between novels and Twitter microfiction

Easy Meat by Rachel Trezise

 

You can buy Easy Meat.........Here

The blurb...

The south Wales Valleys, 23rd June, 2016. It’s another long day chopping beef carcasses up at the slaughterhouse for former reality TV star and Iron Man contender, Caleb Jenkins, whose untroubled world unravelled when his old man’s carpet business went bust last year, another casualty of the global financial crisis. While he’s busy trying to manage the well-being of his conspiracy-theorist brother, the mortgage keeping a roof over his bankrupt parents’ heads, his own excruciating grief, internal rage and impossible credit score, politicians of all persuasions are promising the scared and voiceless people around him real change.

Desperate for acknowledgement and a transformation he can’t quite bring about by his own means, Caleb is on the edge.

Easy Meat is a glimpse of a young man and a country on the verge of a momentous decision.

My Review....

At only 121 pages long this is a punchy longish short story/novella.

Easy Meat tells the story of a day in the life of Valley Boy Caleb Jenkins. The day in question just happens to be the day of the Brexit referendum. Caleb is a man on the verge of a breakdown. He is struggling with his awful, low paid job in a slaughterhouse, where the rest of the workers are Polish immigrants. He is wilting under the pressure of sharing his home with his now bankrupt and homeless parents and weed addicted layabout brother. On top of this he has real girlfriend and child issues to contend with. He just needs a little something to help him turn the corner, just an opportunity to get back to normal.

For me there are a few little niggles with this novella. While the Merthyr setting is integral to the story I found the overuse of street and neighbourhood names to be a little distracting as was the ongoing description of butchering beef carcasses. While I understand that this was used as a counterpoint while Caleb's story was told in flash-back I thought the carcass dissection scenes were overdone. After reading this you may well sway away from eating meat. I don't know but would hazard a guess that the author is a vegetarian. and lastly I did not quite "get" the ending. Again these are subjective and probably say more about me than the writing.

Being a Valley Boy myself (I may have mentioned that before 🙄🙈) the area where I thought the author was absolutely bang on was in describing the socio-political malaise that now overwhelms the once proud working class, once labour voting valleys. The Valleys were the area that benefit most from European investment but still voted in favour of Brexit. She is very clever in that she does not do this by using macro-political policy statements, indeed politics is hardly mentioned overtly at all, but by describing the micro day-to-day encounters that Caleb and his family have. You see the frustration that had caused a gap in the market that UKIP and Brexit exploited. It seems that while most people voted Brexit not for ideological reasons but because the status quo just was not working. You are left feeling that there is a lack of opportunity and an inevitability that this festering social inertia will continue. 

The author brings a caustic description to these encounters that is savagely sarcastic and well observed, (and with a hint of Raymond Chandler read in Humphrey Bogart's voice) see selected quotes. Any senior figure in the labour party (or indeed Plaid Cymru) would do well to read this book. It is a Welsh Boys from the Blackstuff for the Love Island generation. 

Finally, I know we shouldn't judge a book by its cover but this cover is a belter.

Selected Quotes...

"It couldn't get any worse, the man said, rubbing his beer belly. There's families up on the hill surviving on charity from the church, like something from Victorian times

Sad, Caleb said.

Chuck a hand grenade in I reckon, the man said, see what happens."

"He'd been a cast member on the 2012 series, with seven other twenty somethings from every Abercwmnowhere in post industrial south Wales, bodybuilders with the IQ of crayons, ballooned on steriods and Pinot Grigio-soaked Beyonce wannabes. It was TV designed for rubberneckers who thought the salad always greener in someone else kebab."

"He noticed the peroxide blonde in the queue next to him was looking at him too, bottle green eyes homed in on him like a missile on a target. Scorching hot but obviously high maintenance, if not borderline insane."

"You know what it's like. We're working class bro.We're easy meat."

About the author...

Rachel Trezise’s debut novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl won a place on the Orange Futures List in 2002 and is now part of the Library of Wales series. In 2006 her short story collection Fresh Apples won the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second collection Cosmic Latte won the Edge Hill Prize Readers’ Award in 2013 while her travel memoir Dial M for Merthyr won the Max Boyce Award. Her first play Tonypandemonium was produced by the National Theatre of Wales and won the Theatre Critics for Wales Award for best production. We’re Still Here was also produced by the National Theatre of Wales in 2017 while Cotton Fingers toured Wales, Ireland and Scotland, receiving a Summerhall Lustrum Award at the Edinburgh Festival. She lives in the Rhondda.

Mists & Megaliths by Catherine McCarthy

 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

You can buy Mists & Megaliths............Here

You can follow Catherine McCarthy....Here

The Blurb....

Welcome to Wales, land of mists and megaliths, where mythical creatures and ancient spirits lurk in the strangest of places.
This collection of 10 supernatural stories offers a flurry of folklore, a gathering of ghosts, and even a cosmic cave creature.

Stories include...

Lure: A fisherman who nets the tail fin of a lure becomes obsessed with finding the rest, but what else lies hidden in the ancient lake?

Carreg Samson: A Neolithic burial chamber stares out to sea, remembering times long since past, but when it loses its heart of stone to a young girl the repercussions are hard to bear.

Coblynau: An old man watches the mountain which was once a slag heap of coal. He listens for the knock of the Coblynau, certain they will come for him... soon, just like they did to warn of the Aberfan disaster.

Author Catherine McCarthy’s second collection invites the reader on a regional journey, evoking a sense of quiet horror from the cosmic to the Gothic.

My Review...

This is a really good collection of short stories that give a real flavour of the dark, Celtic folklore of Wales and bring it into the modern era. A mini Mabinogion.

Horror really isn't my thing so was a tad wary of doing  a review for a horror book. However, this book is not so much horrific as supernatural/creepy.  Turns out that I really enjoyed this Welsh Twilight Zone. There are 10 terrifying tales, so there is sure to be something for everyone.

1. Gragen. A tale about a jealous sea spirit.

2. Two's company, threes a shroud. Comic claustrophobia in a grave.

3. Jagged Edges. The spirit of a railway man haunts a disused station.

4. Mara. What actually is a spirit box?

5. Retribution. When a village is turned to idol worship, And a monster is caged.

6. Ysbrid Y Mor. A stranger comes promising hope, do you let him in?

7. The Ice House. What we do in life echoes in the afterlife.

8. Lure. Who is fishing for who?

9. Corblynau. The mining trolls of Wales.

10. Carreg Samson. If the ancient standing stones could talk.

Each tale offers a little something a little different from the comedy of Two's company, to the foreboding of catastrophic karma of  Carreg Samson, to the moral tale of being a welcoming people in Ysbrid Y Mor.

What really comes through in the writing is a respect, awe and dare I say love for the ancient tales and locations of Wales. I have been to a few of the locations in the book. Namely the ice-house, Cefn Coed Cemetery, Porthgain and as a young lad swam in Cefn Golau pond next to the cholera graves. (Now having the read the ice-house, the fact that I swam there creeps me out a bit 😳.) She has chosen the locales very well, because having been there I can testify that they do, indeed, feel like "Thin Places." A Thin Place is where the dividing line between this world and the next is at its most shallow and can, on occasion, be breached. 

Aside from the creepiness of the tales, the writing can be powerful and gripping. In one section in particular in Corblynau the last miner in Wales is in a nursing home and suffering from dementia and the way the author writes about him is absolutely heart breaking.

There is also a short pre-amble before every tale, which gives a little background information and sets the scene. A nice touch and very informative.

This collection is a display of the dark, spiritual heritage of Cymru. As well as being ripping yarns in themselves they give you something to ponder about in your own lives afterwards.

Selected Quotes...

"If Charles were still able to give a derisory snort, he would have done so, but the cartilage in his nasal passages had long since decomposed."

"The end of the line. Or was it the beginning? Harold thought it depended entirely on one’s perspective."

"I suppose in retrospect I hoped to glean some reaction from the creature, however small, and it made me wonder as to the instinctive need in us humans to communicate with our fellow men. You see, the more accustomed I grew to the creature’s appearance, the more readily I accepted it, until it seemed almost human."

"Decades of coal dust nestle in lungs which rattle like a percolator as he breathes."

About the author...

Catherine McCarthy is a spinner of dark tales, often set in her native Wales, U.K.
She has published two novels and two collections of short stories and her new novella, Immortelle, will be published by Off Limits Press in July 2021.
Her stories have appeared in anthologies such as Graveyard Smash, The One That Got Away, and Diabolica Britannica, and her flash fiction has been published by Crystal Lake Publishing and Flame Tree Press.
In 2020, she won the Aberystwyth University Imagining Utopias prize for creative writing.
Catherine lives in an old farmhouse with her illustrator husband and its ghosts, and when she is not writing may be found hiking the rugged coast-path or photographing ancient churchyards for story inspiration.

Fish Town by John Gerard Fagan

 

⭐⭐⭐⭐

You can buy Fishtown.....Here

The blurb...

"For years my life had been a string of temporary work in factories and call centres or unemployed. Approaching 30 and disillusioned with life in Glasgow, I sold everything I had and left for a new life in a remote fishing village in Japan. I knew nothing of the language or the strange new land that I would call home for the next seven years. Fish Town is an eye-opening true story that paints the reality of living in Japan as an outsider."

My Review...

I was discussing epistemology stories with an author the other day and this is a great example. Essentially a short autobiographical novella, based on  a diary format but without dates. The entries were written on a phone. I don't know whether this is a planned literary sleight of hand or just happened that way, either way it works with this content. This leads to very minimalist, writing style that packs a punch in a straightforward manner. Unlike a lot of autobiographical books there is no embellishment or purple prose.

 The narrative is stripped back to its soul, which reflects the author's experience of being a stranger, in a strange land. Not a word is wasted but you really feel the emotion behind the limited narrative.

Feeling a little lost in his native Scotland, the author sells up and decides to "go on an adventure!". He ends up as a TEFL teacher in a decaying fish-town in Japan However, unlike The Hobbit, there was no magical, thrilling escapade. The author endured, and I think endured is the correct word loneliness, isolation, mental ill health and an increasing drinking issue in a country that looks down on foreigners. You are in his shoes and it is a fascinating insight into an culture most of  us will never see. A culture that holds "respect" and "honour" in high regard but can be extremely cruel. 

Heart-breaking at times, sometimes funny, often surreal but never self pitying, you find yourself rooting for him and hoping that every turn of the page will see him turn the corner and find a place where he is happy. If you have a friend or relative who is considering moving lock, stock and barrel to a foreign culture with a foreign language, do them a huge favour and buy them this book. It is an eye opener.

 I'm not going to tell whether our hero finds a place/person where his soul is happy and content. You'll have to read it for yourself and it is very, quick, easy read well worth it, whether or not you are thinking of travelling to the land of the rising sun.

Selected quotes..

"foreign wounds don’t heal in a place like Japan they only get worse, fester, and bleed out."

"Earthquake drill....they all practised at the school with yellow helmets and hiding under the desk no helmet for the foreigner though again I was to sit in the locked staffroom"

"we went to a spa town in the mountains outside Tokyo so they could experience a traditional Japanese hotel the food was served in the room by an old woman who stared to make sure you ate it whole fish on sticks raw fish Japanese eggs octopus balls my mum tried but couldn’t eat anything but the rice and vegetables they had a hard time sleeping on the tatami floor but got a good idea of the life out there opened both their eyes to a new world to what was far beyond the outskirts of Glasgow."

About the Author...

John Gerard Fagan is a writer from Scotland who has returned home after living in Japan for the last seven years. He has interests in Japanese literature and Noir. He is a university lecturer. He is also a musicain and and artist. He painted the cover of fish town. Find his blog Here

The Man In The Seventh Row by Brian Pendreigh

 

⭐⭐⭐⭐

You can buy "The Man in the Seventh Row"...here

Overview...

 Roy Batty grew up in Edinburgh, the son of a butcher. Roy became a film fanatic and saw many classic films of the 60s and 70s. Still a film buff as an adult, when he goes to the cinema he repeatedly finds himself watching himself playing the familiar characters on the big screen from his seat in the Seventh Row. His soul is slowly dissolving into the ethereal melting pot of cinema. Why? we flashback over Roy's life to see what led him here. Is it real? or is it a mental breakdown, or a dream? Roy meets a kindred spirit, a fellow film fan. Can she save Roy from being swallowed up? In addition to the main story, there are 3 additional short stories that are connected, albeit tenuously and tangentially, to the main story.

My Review..

This is a strange book in many ways. Often when doing a review I know exactly how many stars to give. In this I was torn between 3 and 5. Which is odd in itself, why the gap? why not 3 or 4 or 4 and 5? and it took me a while to work out why. 

It does not follow any set formula for a type of book. Large parts of the narrative are given to describing Roy's favourite movies. Most people spend their lives in reality with the occasional trip to distraction in the cinema. Roy seems to live his life in cinema with the occasional trip to distraction in reality I found that the plot  wasn't really important. The plot seems hazy and blurred. In most books the narrative is a device to move the plot along, yet in this book it feels, to me, as if the plot is an excuse to talk about the narrative. Which if you are as skilled as the author is (both in writing and his chosen subject) is no bad thing.This view may be down to me and my often idiosyncratic tendencies  and obviously others may will have a different take but personally I am not a huge fan of magical realism. I often prefer things to be like me, big and simple.

On the other hand the nuts and bolts of the writing are bang on for me. When I review a book, I underline interesting or unusual phrases possibly to use as a quote. My pen was working overtime in this book. In particular I found one large paragraph (too big to quote) about the hopes and dreams of the people who drift to LA in an attempt to find stardom quite moving.

The early part of the story reads like an autobiography. This was my favourite part of the book. Roy recounted his childhood including trips to the Cinema in Edinburgh and while on holiday in North Berwick. It was here sat in silence with his dad, enjoying a shared experience, that they bonded.  This and the films resonated with me. Substitute the Gwent Valleys and Porthcawl and he could have been describing me. 

We Welsh are known for introspection and melancholia and it struck me that the author writes like a Welshman. He writes "hiraeth" exceptionally well. Hiraeth does not really translate in English. In English it means home sickness but it is so much more. It is home sickness on steroids. It is a deep longing and pull in your soul to a place, time and people that may no longer be there, if they existed at all. It is the irresistible  pull back to the land of your fathers. Reading this part of the novel was like sticking a thumb in a week old bruise. The pain felt so sweet. 

This is not a book that you gallop through towards the crashing end. Luckily enough I am of an age and enough of a film fan to have seen all the movies Roy talks about, which I would imagine is a great help in reading this book. Barry Norman or Mark Kermode would love it. This book is like a conversation with an old friend in front of an open fire with a glass of whiskey talking about old films. It is a book that you wallow in and let the hiraeth seep in through your pores.

The 3 short stories at the end of the book are interesting but add little to the main narrative. Though the second story "hommage" does have a very clever spin.

So 3 or 5 stars. What the hell. I cant decide. We'll split the difference. It's a 4

Selected Quotes

"Cinema is a place where illusion and make believe are real."

"His father was never really the sort of man who would have ever been so presumptuous as take a starring part. He only really had a supporting role in life."

"He thought he had seen him up there on the screen, but it was difficult to be sure because his eyes had filled with tears. They ran down his face and he wiped them away. In the cinema, in the confessional darkness, no one can see you cry."

"but he had seen enough films from Oliver Twist to Lady and the Tramp to know that just because someone is dirty it did not necessarily mean they were dirt."

About the author...

Brian Pendreigh is an award-winning writer and journalist, whose regular outlets have included The Guardian (1999-2007), The Times and The Scotsman. He has written several film books and most recently was editor of The Times on Cinema (2018). He was twice Britain’s Film Journalist of the Year and his work has been picked by the Scottish Examination Board for English interpretation questions. He is a keen long-distance runner and pub quizzer (with wins on Mastermind, Eggheads, 15 to 1 and Only Connect). He lives in Portobello, Edinburgh. His lounge overlooks the Pentland Hills and his bedroom looks out to the sea and romance.