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Waveland by Frederick Barthelme

November 23, 2025

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Our Ancestors by Italo Calvino

The dog signifies nothing... Now is as good a time as any I suppose to admit that I regularly confuse Italo Calvino with Umberto Eco and when struggling for the name of one of them, invariably come up with the name of the other. What value does this add to a review of either’s work? None whatsoever. I just thought it would pay to be honest up front, so that if I start talking about semiotics, the discourse of literary criticism, or beards, then you’ll know my train of thoughts has switched tracks and is heading for a bridge under construction. Of course, reading the Wiki pages on the two of them (to make sure I was talking about the right fellow) I noticed with some dread that Our Ancestors is one of the best known works of the most translated contemporary Italian writer (at the time of his death) and here I am, trying to make sense of it in my own personal context. Well, I’m always going to be treading down some fool’s heels so why should I care if it’s actually most peopl...

Horse Destroys The Universe by Cyriak Harris

I think our horse might be eating the internet. So, I hear you ask, what the utter fuck? To be honest, I pledged to the crowd-funding of this book purely on the premise that a horse could destroy the universe, which essentially, and spoiler-free (it’s in the chuffing title after all) it does. After that, this entire review is based on the research I did this morning between sitting at my desk and actually starting the work I’m paid to do (around 60-80 minutes all told). First off, Morgan Cyriak Harris is an animator who enjoys the surreal effects of the formal Western Art Tradition technique of mis en abyme , or in other words, the deliberate placing within an image of a copy of the same image and the subsequent implication of infinitely represented worlds – think two mirrors reflecting each other. In literary terms this could be the self-reflexive embedding of the story within the story, something of which I am inordinately fond. In Harris’s work this te...

Angel's Inferno by William Hjortsberg

You're going to burn for this, Angel... I'm a fan of William Hjortsberg , as you might be able to tell (and yes, I've come out of my self-imposed exile to bash this review out because I have no beer and someone else is on the Playstation. Of course I mean I am taking a well-earned break from my deep, inner work), and as such, I don't want to believe the shit-talking that's been going on around this novel, published some 40 years since his first to feature Harry Angel, the tough, ex-military private eye on a tragic trajectory with His Satanic Majesty. However, I've read it, and to their credit (and the book's detriment) for the most part the criticisms are valid, to wit: The plot is barmy - I won't be going into lengthy spoilers but rest assured if you want a spoiler you can find plenty of them over at BoardGameGeek . Caveat emptor. Harry Angel / Johnny Favorite undergoes an unintelligible schism in terms of personality, suddenly and without warning. Some...

Spares by Michael Marshall Smith

Terror, and relief; relief and terror, so intermingled that they feel like the same thought. I'm having a great time reassembling my lost library, re-reading books I once thought I'd consumed and therefore to which I might justifiably never return. It's great! Next up, in case you're wondering, will be Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut (not that I'd lost it, just that I reallyreallyreally want to read it again, having been a whole 10 years since his untimely death). Michael Marshall Smith (or Michael Marshall when he writes out-and-out horror/thriller titles) is a British writer who brings to mind the work of his contemporary sci-fi & etc. novelist Jeff Noon. His first book was Only Forward (on my To Re-Read list for sure) which with the talking appliances originally made me think of Rogue Trooper in 2000AD comics, and got me into slick, quick, character and plot-driven sci-fi back in the late 1990s. Wait, or was that One Of Us? Bah, who cares. Spare...

A Bright Moon For Fools by Jasper Gibson

Dipsomaniacal - an apt description of most Christmas's round mine... Ah, what would be a review penned by yours truly without some sort of grovelling apology at the outset? A better review no doubt, but that aside I can't help but continue the tiresome tradition with an apology. Sorry to my regular robotic readers (hi bots!) but I have been very neglectful of the blog of late, having been tied up with my pursuit of a broader spectrum of dilettantism; I've been taking part in a number of MOOCs offered by various HEIs on the FutureLearn platform. Worth checking out if you ask me. (Subtle enough plug, you think?) Anyway, the break afforded by a foray into further education has proved something of a test for Jasper Gibson and his fiction. In truth, it took me a little while to remember what exactly the novel was about, who was in it, and how I felt about the whole thing. Instant alarm bells. Of course, having had a break, I'd had a good crack at filling my h...

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Waveland by Frederick Barthelme

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