Fantastic Metropolis

1. Story collection (i): Open the Box, Andrew Humphrey

(Elastic Press, 2003)

The Norwich of Andrew Humphrey’s imagination is as richly imagined and as universal as James Kelman’s Glasgow: he is East Anglia’s laureate of loss and alienation. Humphrey has been described as a ‘rising star’ of the UK independent press, but on the evidence of the softly spoken and tormented tales collected in the Open the Box he deserves the widest possible audience. His deft, poignant and laconic stories—switching from fantasy to gritty realism and back—pick their way through the psychological wreckage of twenty-first century lives out of kilter. For me, the cumulative effect of these 13 tense and entertaining tales is an overwhelming sense of anger at the damage inflicted on the western psyche by the horrors of neo-utilitarianism.

2. Story collection (ii): The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius, Michael Moorcock

(Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003)

It’s 30 years to the month since I first started reading these densely symbolic and fragmented chronicles, but Moorcock’s witty, surreal and disturbing JC short stories are every bit as relevant as they were in the early 1970s. Several of the original 1960s/70s tales have been replaced by more recent stories (‘The Spencer Inheritance’, ‘Cheering for the Rockets’, ‘The Camus Referendum’, ‘Firing the Cathedral’) to worthwhile effect. The new stories are amongst the strongest and it’s interesting to reflect on the ways in which JC has mutated in response to our own lives and times. The thematic flexibility of the Cornelius stories allows Moorock to tackle the uses and abuses of science, the resurgence of magical thinking, celebrity, the influence of the mass media and—of course—neo-colonialism. Recommended reading for Prime Ministers, Presidents and Media Moguls everywhere.

3. Novel (i): China, Alan Wall

(Secker and Warburg, 2003)

Politically engaged, beautifully written, touching and funny, China is a triumphantly redemptive tragicomedy of corporate power and its victims. This tangled tale of art, history, globalisation, terrorism, money, love, loss and the new anarchism entirely justifies Alan Wall’s growing reputation as one of the UK’s most erudite, perceptive and emotionally resonant writers.

4. Novel (ii): Rule of Night, Trevor Hoyle

(Pomona, 2003)

Originally published in 1975, this is the story of Kenny Seddon, an alienated, violent teenage skinhead. Written 30 years before the current boom in urban hard man literature, Rule of Night is a cool, restrained slice of gritty realism. Hoyle rejects easy moral platitudes and the allure of ‘stylish’ violence to take his readers into Kenny’s world and his psyche. He’s a hard character to like but, against the odds, we do care what happens to him at the end of the book. Which is just as well because there’s a note in the copyright statement that tells us that Kenny knows where we live…

5. Novel (iii): The End of My Tether, Neil Astley

(Scribner, 2003)

The End of My Tether is a convoluted and densely plotted tale pitting the mystic (not to mention quasi-mythical) Inspector Kernan against the forces of agribusiness and untrammeled capitalism. It’s a challenging read: the plot is crammed to bursting with mythic and literary archetypes and peppered with folk tales, songs, woodcuts and almanac-style snippets of folklore. Furthermore, The timeframe shifts constantly and characters metamorphose and, in some cases, undergo a form of dissolution familiar to admirers of Thomas Pynchon. Astley’s anger at corrupt politicians, business people and public servants—particularly in relation to the causes and handling of the UK outbreak of BSE in cattle—is palpable on every page. Some critics found the authorial voice petulant; others felt the story was smothered by ‘wordy indulgences’ (Nicola McAllister in The Guardian). But for me it’s a dazzling fantasy-thriller and I thoroughly enjoyed the way Astley puts the boot into his privileged conspirators, aspirant wheeler dealers and dodgy cops.