Welcome | Quiet little Lies

We say we love flowers, yet we pluck them

The Crimson Petal and the White

Michel Faber

Walking into a room of your house, or climbing or descending the stairs, only to have to pause in complete forgetfulness of what you intended to do there, is generally considered to be a sign of encroaching old age or simple-mindedness; or both. It suggests a level of distraction that's humourous to watch but puzzling and sometimes upsetting to endure. And while watching someone dither so can be entertaining, being watched while you yourself dither is just embarrassing. So you can imagine how foolish someone might feel if they wrote a whole novel in a similarly aimless manner.

Subterranean Homesick Blue Christmas

23 Dec 2009

(to the tune of, and with apologies to, Bob Dylan's original)

1. Santa's at the north pole
Mixing up the present lists
Rudolf's at the punch bowl
Getting seasonably pissed

The man in the red coat
Beard out, hat off
Says he's got a full sled
Your gift could fall off

Look out, kid
Are you naughty or good?
He knows which
You know that's understood

You better not shout or cry
I'm telling you why
The man in the fur-trimmed hat
And a double chin
Wants a sherry left out
You only got gin.

See you next year

Let's be honest.

Having got to this late stage in 2009 without having a decent idea for this year's Pocketful of Lies (or indeed finishing the entire Exercises in Song cycle) I have to accept---and so do you, dear readers---there'll be no pocketful this year.

Cut off the telephone

13 Nov 2009

When someone says they've lost a friend they usually mean they've fallen out with them. The realization finally struck me this weekend that I had lost one in a far more permanent way; that I had also foolishly neglected the friendship for so long (thanks to geography, social scenes and the ever-intervening mess of live's administrative duties) that it was only on losing him that I was jolted into reminiscing about how much had been lost.

nonfiction

The ghoul in me

This website is in danger of becoming an infrequent elegy.

Nearly eight years ago I wrote a story about bereavement. It was a bit complicated stylistically, but I think it worked all right. You might want to read it now, if you're planning to ever do so, as I'm about to discuss it in detail.

Barbara Wright (1915-2009)

Something I have in common with Adam Thirlwell: regret.

Richard pointed me this weekend to an article by Adam Thirlwell on Barbara Wright. Thirlwell mentions that the respected translator passed away in March, and he regrets never having a chance to meet her.

Life has no message: only mess

The Death of Vishnu

Manil Suri

If you want a novel which wilfully mystifies far-off places to make the middle classes think their reading tastes are exotic—think by authors like McCall Smith—then look for one whose quoted reviews talk of "characters smell[ing] of cardamom and clove." Such books wear their broadmindedness heavily, patronising reader and subject alike, adding layers of sensual description until there remain no hard edges. in the story.

Reflections on an enormous puddle

25 Jul 2007

You ignored all the warnings
About global warming
(Or climate change as we now call it)
You dismissed the statistics
As myth told by mystics
In favour of cramming your wallit.

All those air miles behind you
Expanding your mind? You
Know: brains aren’t things on which you sit.
So instead now you find
An expanded behind
That’s the size of the cloud you emit.

Now, given the rain
Fell again, and again,
And poor Yorkshire is all under watter
Then if you still deny
The state of the sky
You must be as mad as a hatter.

But if you’re not sure
Of the need for a cure

Something is squeezing my skull

The Doctor is Sick

Anthony Burgess

Diagnosed with a brain tumour, and given a year to live, Burgess set himself the task of posthumously supporting his wife through royalties: by writing, a lot. The result was patchy but prolific and, a year later and with no sign of actual physical death, he slowed down and improved a good deal: classics like A Clockwork Orange followed shortly afterwards. The Doctor is Sick is very much a workmanlike product of that long year, and in some ways one of the most thinly-veiled of Burgess' semi-autobiographical novels.

Time as a tool, not as a couch

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell

It's easy to praise Cloud Atlas: partly because so many others have; partly because it's so good. But you wonder how it came about: if short stories don't sell, is this a way of selling short stories? Unite them with a theme, as Arabian Nights does. That's a set of short stories with a concept, and in its time it's sold rather well. So, take a central conceit—a nested set of tales, each told by a character in another—and apply it to any anthology you like.