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Continue reading →: The Locked Room by Paul Auster
New York Trilogy #3 – published 1986 Auster’s trilogy concludes strongly, with the best of the three novels. In the first two Auster used mystery to set the scene for a philosophical consideration of identity and dealing with trauma. Though this is similarly structured in its first half, it is…
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Continue reading →: When The Whales Leave by Yuri Rytkheu
translated from the Russian by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse Yuri Rytkheu was born in 1930 in Uelen, a village that sits on a barrier spit of land on the tip of the far northeastern Chukchi peninsula, just over sixty miles from Alaska. He died in 2008, and was one of Russia’s…
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Continue reading →: For Fear Of Little Men by John Blackburn
I’m new to the writing of John Blackburn, but the experimental nature of his work, and his refusal to follow any sort of norm, has already grabbed me. Here he introduces the reader to three quite bizarre narrative threads. In London a man pays a prostitute to just sleep with…
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Continue reading →: Hard By A Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili
Saba and his older brother, Sandro, came to London as children with their father, Irakli, in 1992, as refugees from the civil war; their mother stayed behind in Georgia, where she died. Thirty years on, Irakli has returned to Georgia, and communicates to his son in England that he has…
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Continue reading →: March into SpringThe start of March is the start of spring as far as the meteorologists are concerned, though astronomical spring is closer to 20 March, the vernal equinox, when day is as long as night. Not much sign of it in weather terms here in Shap though, with some snow forecast…
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Continue reading →: Trenque Lauquen (Parts 1 & 2)Argentina 2023 This is a wonderfully tense noir mystery that rewards patience; both parts I and II taken together make up four and a half hours. As many mysteries do, it begins in the middle. When botanist Laura goes missing, her older boyfriend, Rafa, and would be suitor Chicho, team…
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Continue reading →: Tiger StripesMalaysia 2023 Here is a fine example of what can be done through the genre of horror, as first time Director Amanda Nell Eu observes the coming of age of a 12 year old girl in rural Selangor in Malaysia. This is brave film making as she sees puberty through…
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Continue reading →: A Devil Comes To Town by Paolo Maurensigtranslated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel It was no surprise that I enjoyed this. I’m a bag fan of Maurensig, having read three previous novels of his and found them all great, and beacuse its his only venture into the horror genre. I hurry to add though, that…
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Continue reading →: The Hand of Kornelius Voyt by Oliver OnionsThis is a speculative coming of age story from the 1930s that in its eeriness and suspense is typical of Onions’s best writing, but also is a novel of its times, in its dealing with workers’ strikes.A difficulty is that the tangents Onions takes to include aspects of historical significance…
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Continue reading →: What’s next?I’d been back in the UK just over three weeks on the Monday that just passed and have found my mind wandering to the next journey, or ‘course’ as I prefer to call it. The term ‘Course’ dates back to my days leading trips of youngsters, and was the term…
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 