In this book there are basically two stories intersecting; the story of Shaw, who goes through a sort of life crisis and whose life consists of not much but the visits to his mother who has dementia and lives in a care home. One day he meets Tim who gives him a job in which he needs to sit in front of a computer in a boat house and do stuff for Tim's blog, travel to seemingly random destinations and visit a medium on a regular basis. The second story is the story of Victoria, with whom Tim has a...

(...)But this is a review, so I have to tell you something about the beautiful, beautiful prose, which at times is maybe bit overdone as well. But that didn’t really bother me: it’s art’s prerogative. This novel is first and foremost about its sentences – just like Twin Peaks: The Return is about the scenes. Harrison’s prose consists of fragments of 2020 contemporary life, and an eye for plants and how the weather affects light. I also have to tell you about certain meta-parts, in which Harriso

OMFG this book.So there's a man, emerging from a kind of loss of self, still only halfway out. There's a woman retreating to a safe place, but it turns out to be something else. There is a conspiracy community, or several. Anxiety: selfhood, brexit, climate change. There is transformation and renewal. And death and disappearance. And transformation. The islands are becoming boats and the boats are becoming islands.Tense, nervy, spackled with correspondences and coincidences. Lock yourself away f...

A middle-aged man, recovering from a breakdown, takes a job from a strange fellow he meets down by a river. His occasional lover inherits a house in a village with some unusual locals. They both hear voices. And then there are rumours of a new species of human in England, green people that come from the water. What does it all mean? I haven't the foggiest. I know there is an allegory about Brexit buried in here somewhere but I can't summon the energy to unravel it. Even though Harrison does a de...

Pros: psychogeography (love!) and some beautiful passagesCons: no semblance of a coherent plot and I had no idea what was happening 85% of the time

While I enjoyed the writing, the characters, and the settings in this book, it was often hard to tell what was going on. It highlights a lot of modern-day angst (conspiracy theories, elder care responsibilities, economic and political uncertainty), but too much of the action in the book was murky at best. 2.5⭐️

This is a weird story about strange lives of strange people. It was nominated for the 2020 British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards and because I nowadays enjoy SFF from the UK more than from the USA, I decided to give it a try. This is not my kind of book, but others can find it fascinating.It starts in the Great Britain during Brexit as a story of middle-aged man, Shaw. He had a mother withy dementia, whom he regularly visits, only one of her rather large family, mostly to re-watch th...

Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2020For the last few years I have read all of the books on the Goldsmiths shortlist, but at the time it was announced last year the hardback of this book was rather expensive and I was trying to cut down my book spending. So although it went on to win, I decided to wait for the paperback, which is now available.I have never read Harrison before, so I can't comment on how it fits into his oeuvre, but his fictional world is quite an intriguing one, which mixes the m

"As I said, in July..."Recommended - and one that would make a good Goldsmith's contender" - now winner of the Prize!!Is logic in any sense the right method to be applying here?Two years ago I had the pleasure of reading a range of innovative fiction from UK/Irish small independent presses as part of the Republic of Consciousness Prize.One of the most fascinating books I read was the collection You Should Come With Me Now: Stories of Ghosts, by M. John Harrison. My review: https://www.goodreads....

Intelligent and eerie, masterfully crafted and inconspicuously relevant, the new M. John Harrison novel draws a lot from his previous work – from "Climbers" to his recent flash fiction, via "The Course of the Heart", "Signs of Life" and even the Kefahuchi Tract novels – subliming the already seen and now perfectly ripe elements of his prose into the essence of almost alchemical quality. Readers who have already tried the previous batches will recognize its taste, but even they are at risk of bec...

It’s never great when you finish a book and are still a bit puzzled as to what it was all about. I mean, as someone who’s equally creeped out by the 1970s film version of The Water Babies, Kingsley’s original morality tale and the thought of living in a country that voted for Brexit, I can see why the novel is described as unsettling, but I hoped for more.Gross wee, green, mucus-y, embryo podlets that haunt the water systems are so up my street that I should have loved this. Instead, the biggish...

A book with a lot of promise that feels like it's left unfulfilled; eccentric characters, great prose and a mixture of weird and the banal, the novel sparkles for the first 50 or so pages but then it starts scattering and doesn't really come together again; definitely worth reading but I had very high expectations and those fell somewhat short.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm a gigantic fan of M. John Harrison's exquisite prose. I don't necessarily love all of his works equally, but The Course of the Heart is quite possibly one of my top three favorite works of fiction (which is why I'm never going to review it; it's too personal, just like my relationship with the utterly sublime The Hour After Westerly), so of course I was excited about The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again when it was announced, and now the digital edition is

Reading through the Goodreads list of books eligible for the upcoming GoldsmithsPrize, I was delighted to find this book by the sf/f writer M. John Harrison. I have read his trilogy beginning with LIGHT and while I wasn’t sure what I thought about it at the time, have thought about it many times since, especially the eerie surreal worldbuilding.This novel has that same atmosphere, which I can only describe as “UNCANNY”. The main character, a middle-aged man named Shaw, seems to be going through

Now winner of the 2020 Goldsmith Prize. I have proposed in the past that given its rather obvious lack of diversity the prize should be renamed the Celtic Prize. So how appropriate to have a “state of the nation” book where the only characters not white are green. Essex Serpent (by Sarah Perry), River (by Esther Kinsky), Fen (by Daisy Johnson) thrown in a food blender with a dash of Dr Who. Sea change, taking place in damp air, foul weather, at a distance, at night. Everything liquidised. Wher...

Nicely off kilter. Reminds me of an old short story of Harrison's called The Incalling where there is an external observer to mysterious goings on the observer is never privy to understanding. In this case 2 protagonists who are oblivious to clues surrounding them although not all the signs signify.

”In fact, the faeries had turned him into a water-baby. A water-baby? You never heard of a water-baby. Perhaps not. That is the very reason why this story was written. There are a great many things in the world which you never heard of; and a great many more which nobody ever heard of; and a great many things, too, which nobody will ever hear of. . .””No water babies, indeed? Why, wise men of old said that everything on earth had its double in the water; any you may see that that is, if not quit...

'Vast feathery geysers erupted through the road. Prismatic colours flashed in all directions. The water collected in front of the ironmonger’s before racing away like a flood between the bungalows of Woolpit Road towards the river. Everyone was hurrying out of the nearby shops, smiling with a kind of delighted alarm. The children, and even some of the men, shouted and ran about, and had to be restrained. It seemed to her as if the whole town stood there for a moment, wondering if the world would...

I read this book because of its shortlisting for the 2020 Goldsmith’s Prize. It’s a story that follows two different characters, Shaw and Victoria. But the remarkable thing about the book is that the reader is quickly aware that there is a whole other storyline developing outside of Shaw and Victoria’s lives and, crucially, just outside of the reader’s perception. When, very early on in the book, we read”He seemed to bring a smell into the kitchen. She couldn’t quite smell it, but she knew it wa...

This is not really a review, and I have marked it as such, as I didn't finish it. I dropped it around 25% cause I was just not feeling it and, to be honest, found it incredibly boring which is really a shame as it had all the hallmarks of books I love. It's as much about England and Brexit as it's about strange occurrences taking place around water bodies. Dereliction and decay permeate the text, the past trying to be present. The promise of regrowth and renewal is there, but hollow.Harrison kee...