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Continue reading →: Perfect Days
Yes, it concerns an older Japanese guy cleaning public toilets, but it is about so much more than that. It’s about seeing beauty in everyday simple things in spite of living and working in the heart of a bustling city. It’s about being curious and open to new experiences. It’s…
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Continue reading →: About Uncle by Rebecca Gisler
translated from the French (Switzerland) by Jordan Stump Evermore conscious that she should be making her own way in the world, an unnamed young woman, along with her younger brother, finds themselves moving to a small town on the Brittany coast to care for her uncle. Uncle is an obese…
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Continue reading →: Apparitions by Adam Pottle
This takes the form of a disturbing memoir, veering towards auto-fiction, and can only loosely be described as horror.Interestingly, it is written by a deaf author, and concerns a deaf protagonist who narrates much of the book. For various reasons, it is not an easy book to read; not least,…
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Continue reading →: Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
A few books have addressed the theme of grief in recent years, but this may well be the most inventive. Cordova’s novel also shows how powerful the horror genre can be with an untethered imagination. Having said that, there classic influences are evident here. It begins with the tragedy of…
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Continue reading →: Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy
Lesy’s painstaking research through the archives of a rural Wisconsin town between 1890 and 1910 is presented in such a fashion that it becomes a hymn to a forgotten world, a bleak picture of a tough life with harsh working conditions, one in which death is an ever-present, and yet…
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Continue reading →: Columba’s Bones by David Greig
This series continues to go from strength to strength. He wondered if he really needed his axe. Surely the Christians were unlikely to put up a fight? He had a stabbing knife. The axe seemed like extra weight. Still, it looked good and it scared people. He decided to keep…
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Continue reading →: Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
Here’s a delight – a sharp and affecting snippet of life on the edge in rural County Mayo. Riddled with anxiety and in and out of depression is Dev Hendricks, in his early 20s, his mother recently dead and his father semi-committed to the local mental institution. He just about…
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Continue reading →: Santa Sangre
A Mexican and Italian collaboration, in Spanish, with the Director himself from Chile. I’ve been meaning to get to Jodorowsky films for a while, and eventually began with this. With its vivid colours which somehow make the blood stand out more clearly than ever, and its quirky surrealist style, it…
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Continue reading →: La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono
translated from the Spanish (Equatorial Guinea) by Lawrence Schimel Obono’s short, hundred page, novel is the first from and Equatorial Guinea woman to be translated into English. As well as the absorbing story it tells, it provides an insight into the life of the Fang tribe in remote Guinea. Okomo…
To live more widely
supera superiora sequi
SafeReturnDoubtful is my alias.
Where is Andy?
I was so much older then…
Quote of the Week
Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, ‘What road do I take?’ The cat asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it really doesn’t matter, does it?’
Lewis Carroll
Safe Return Doubtful 