Sam Moore
This was terrific; sadder than I expected and infused with that uncanny hauntedness that I loved in You should come with me now, but here it's all cycles of decay and rebirth, repeating forever on all aspects of life: whether its a house in the midlands, a furtive relationship that can never allow itself to fully become something; the loss of memory and self to age; the strangeness lurking beneath the tides. Endlessly compelling exactly because of how little it explains when it comes to what happens, but so understanding and incisive about why -- especially when it comes to descending into the lake in the woods. Everything is embedded with a certain weight that's difficult to shed, the way clothes cling to you after you get in the water; even the novel's more conspiratorial impulses and ideas aren't approached with urgency, but instead a grim, shambling inevitability.
Do I think that with that in mind it could have worked without the few explicit references to Brexit? Sure; the way in which it approaches time and community and that indefinable Lost Thing everyone is searching for puts it in a post-Brexit context very neatly anyway. But the past, I suppose, is another country.
Read if you like: The Twilight Zone; water as a metaphor for (re)birth; standing in the corner / losing your religion
This was terrific; sadder than I expected and infused with that uncanny hauntedness that I loved in You should come with me now, but here it's all cycles of decay and rebirth, repeating forever on all aspects of life: whether its a house in the midlands, a furtive relationship that can never allow itself to fully become something; the loss of memory and self to age; the strangeness lurking beneath the tides. Endlessly compelling exactly because of how little it explains when it comes to what happens, but so understanding and incisive about why -- especially when it comes to descending into the lake in the woods. Everything is embedded with a certain weight that's difficult to shed, the way clothes cling to you after you get in the water; even the novel's more conspiratorial impulses and ideas aren't approached with urgency, but instead a grim, shambling inevitability.
Do I think that with that in mind it could have worked without the few explicit references to Brexit? Sure; the way in which it approaches time and community and that indefinable Lost Thing everyone is searching for puts it in a post-Brexit context very neatly anyway. But the past, I suppose, is another country.
Read if you like: The Twilight Zone; water as a metaphor for (re)birth; standing in the corner / losing your religion