Cumulative quote story

During 2022 I read 70 books. Following each reading, on both Twitter and Instagram, I would post a picture of each book together with what I felt to be a pertinent quote from the contents. As I was devising my end of year list, it struck me that putting all these quotes together might form a short story, so - entirely without embellishment and wholly in the order in which the books were read - here it is. I think there's some really fluid segues! For those interested - which I imagine to be only a few - the titles of those 70 books (together with a list of favourites) is included in my 2022 summary of reading/watching/listening which I previously posted here.

Untitled

Hadn't a man killed himself because someone had stolen this suitcase? And there was nothing in it but an old suit and some dirty laundry.

Afterwards he was so filled with self-disgust that he drank a bottle of pastis straight. He vomited most of it back up, and was furious to find himself still alive in the morning. And the grey, used corpse at his side.

After the terrible flash he had time for one thought: A bomb has fallen directly on us. Then, for a few seconds or minutes, he went out of his mind.

When he was a kid, he imagined the night creatures might think him dead if he lay still enough, and so they wouldn't bother him. The logic of this now escaped him. A dead body was easy prey.

Because I have shown my hands to be empty you must now expect not only that an illusion will follow, but that you will acquiesce in it.

It was a sight as arresting, as unforgiving as watching the death of an animal with which there is no means of communicating.

It was dull to need a map.

The curse of work so stupid you could weep and so interminably monotonous that it made the days too long and, at the same time, life too short.

She watches her mother spill her secrets onto the grass, her father ransacking her insides.

It's easy enough for strong people to despise cowards. But they ought to take the trouble to learn where the cowardice comes from.

I suppose anything is magical that makes you feel like it's possible to have here and there at the same time.

If you was to ask me to point out the most uncivilised area on the face of this globe I would point here.

We don't want to be killed! We don't want to die! We want to live!

It was as if all that had made her who she was had fled at the moment of dying.

No one is more wary than a deranged man who's still lucid enough to realise that he is disturbed.

I was dreaming of the sea. Except everything was mixed up, as if one ocean had run into another. Sea creatures that should never meet ran alongside each other.

Outside a crowd had gathered, because the rumour had circulated in late afternoon that something was about to happen. But nobody had imagined it would be so lacking in excitement.

Forget souls or emotional vibrations, truth is ghosts are closer to ambered flies trapped in their own past.

There were now only families left on the beach, which exuded all the warmth of a summer evening.  A black ship moved imperceptibly across the line of the horizon, entered the sun and emerged on the other side, as if it had jumped through a paper hoop.

How easily she can fell him: and he will always fall.

They may have pitied me for what I was going through, but they had no idea how it felt to suffer something and not know what it was.

The creatures were still motionless in their alcoves, swaddled in their capes of ragged skin, but their heads were raised and flung back now, those blunt muzzles flared open, the teeth splayed, as they howled their grief.

My knees were rubber and my head was full of gravel and my tongue was just an old bar rag. I got up from the window and swayed a moment, holding the wall. Then I turned slowly.

The four people were trapped on the island as though the subject of an experiment conducted by an unknown hand.

Outside, it seemed that the curious silhouette of the convicted criminal was being literally blown around the terrace of the bar.

She wondered if this was such a place, a non-world hidden in the gaps and folds of her own.

'It's not real, any of it. You're crazy. You need help: none of this is real.  It's just - It's stories, nothing but fairy tales.'

'Stories don't change a thing in the end, no matter how many times you tell them.'

The gun made a small flat sound - almost an unimportant sound.

And then his grandmother died and Underhill realised what it was that the flea expected from him.

The dancer had gone back to sleep, her hair tangled, her face gleaming with perspiration. A deep sleep, into which she seemed to have plunged deliberately.

A rainbow is not the light.

He also insisted that her lips remain tight closed during their bedroom scenes, for which he kept on his shoes - 'in case of fire,' he explained.

Rima Cagnac woke, only to learn that she had come close to dying almost eight decades earlier.

After a few minutes of enthusiastic kissing, he pulled away and said, "Are we going to spend all our time necking, or are we going to shoot something?”

To think that this child, this half-being, this imperfectly formed, helpless creature had the audacity - I can't call it anything else - to love and desire with the conscious, sensuous love of a real woman!

The reflection was not enantiomorphic. My buttonhole was on the right. But so was his.

The floor felt warm, worn, hydroptic, apical, pinnate, like the flesh of a vulpine and voluptuous courtesan erotogenically dying.

As I knelt down to slide the laptop between the wardrobe and the wall, I looked at Jane in her red wig and blue dress and put a finger to my lips - Shhh.

The only way we can explore the future is to reinvent the world.

I had become my own quarry at last, the eternally receding object of my own investigations.

He never removed his hand from the glass, except to refill it. His voice was slurred, faltering, lacking in conviction. He looked at no one in particular. He seemed to be melting into the background.

He was amazed by the sheer beauty of that scene, this tall, slender figure, at times almost obscured amid a confusion of sunlit vapour.

I sat back in my seat, letting out a long breath that I didn't realise I'd been holding.

He remained a tall man with short arms and a hundred accoutrements that nobody else could use.

A society that accepts haphazard interrogation and punishment is a society that has become quiescent, and malleable, and safer.

Normally, his hair was a rook's nest of dark copper whorls; wet and slicked back by the water, it looked like eels dipped in rust.

Well it's probably all right. Good old-fashioned pub grub. But, to be honest, £8.50 a meal? I was hoping to pay more.

The woman entered the fire as if it were a swimming pool; she dove in, ready to sink. There was no doubt she did it of her own will. A superstitious or provoked will, but her own.

Saburo never acted by the proposition that if a person did not love someone he would have to be in love with someone else, or that if he loved someone he could not be in love with someone else.

If there's one thing I became sure of in the course of those weeks, it was this: there is no meaning. That is to say, it didn't exist before we did.

Looking back, gathering together this way - somewhere between a half-normal life and the absence of life - was preparing us for what was to come.

Other people are a mystery and unknowable - and the only way you can survive life is through some kind of selective blindness to that fact.

It was sad. So sad that it almost made you want to give up on being a man, on living on this earth, even though the sun shines on it for several hours a day and there are real birds flying freely.

I know now, of course, that this was a stupid thing to think, in so far as most things we believe will turn out to be ridiculous in the end.

Devo's affinity with outsiders and geeks was a major strength of their appeal that drove the success of Freedom.of Choice at a critical moment.

Since I was a boy, I've dreamed about being a cop and living on the moon. But now I'm here, it seems like the party's over and everybody's going home.

I see he's a cardigan which dreamt it was once a man, or a strawberry flan.

Eyes are the only hands some of us have left.

It's totally normal to feel hopeless or worried every now and then, but if it's ruling your life then it's not so normal.

He paced back and forth, leaving the light for the shadow and then the shadow for the light. He gave the impression of a man containing himself, who can remain calm only at the cost of a terrible effort.

He stood back and gave the door a good kick.

Upstairs, I probed you and you felt like the softest tangerine in the fruit bowl.

Brody felt light-headed. His fingertips tingled. He sat down in the chair and drew several deep breaths, to stifle the fear that was mounting inside him.

He had the charm of certain consumptives: fine features, transparent skin, lips that were sensual and mocking at the same time.

Maybe you're better off not asking questions you don't really want the answer to. Just keep pretending this is a fairy tale and leave the hard decisions to the adults.

It was bold and it was brazen, though neither word did her performance justice; masterful: that just about covered it.

He felt a wave of disquiet. It had been a bad break coming across this girl. In combat, like it or not, a girl is your extra heart. The enemy has two targets against your one.

You think I was chasing you. Perhaps it was you who was chasing me from in front. Perhaps we were simply running in the same direction. We each see things in a way that suits our own preference.

Dr Nathan gazed at the display photographs of terminal syphilitics in the cinema foyer. Already members of the public were leaving.

The Best and Worst of 2022

Well, it's that time of the year when everyone is doing their 'best and worst of' lists, so here is mine. I'm going to list the books and movies and records I read/watched/listened to in 2022 and then pick my favourites. This isn't restricted to what was new in 2022, but what I actually watched and read and heard - some of these items might be very old indeed.

Books:

I read the following in 2022:

Georges Simenon – The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien

Mo Hayder – Birdman

John Hersey – Hiroshima

Andy Cox (Editor) – Black Static #80/81

Christopher Priest – The Prestige

Georges Simenon – The Carter of La Providence

M John Harrison – English Heritage

Albert Camus – The First Man

Georgina Bruce – This House Of Wounds

Georges Simenon – The Yellow Dog

Chris Beckett – Tomorrow

Carson McCullers – The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

Josh Reynolds – The Flower Path

Tomiko Inui – The Secret of the Blue Glass

Georges Simenon – Night At The Crossroads

Priya Sharma – All The Fabulous Beasts

Georges Simenon – A Crime In Holland

Julie C Day – Uncommon Miracles

Georges Simenon – The Grand Banks Café

Sarah Hall – Mrs Fox

Deborah Curtis – Touching From A Distance

Daniel Church – The Hollows

Maxim Jakubowski – The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

Nicholas Royle – Best British Short Stories 2020

Georges Simenon – A Man’s Head

Terry Grimwood – Skin For Skin

Alison Littlewood – Path Of Needles

Steven J Dines – The Incarnations of Mariela Pena

Raymond Chandler – Smart-Aleck Kill

Simon Avery – Sorrowmouth

Georges Simenon – The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin

Alan Garner – Treacle Walker

John Baxter – Woody Allen – A Biography

Keith Brooke & Eric Brown – Wormhole

R.M.Cartmel – North Sea Rising

Stefan Zweig – Beware of Pity

Ben Tufnal – On Mirrors

Brian Aldiss – The Eighty-Minute Hour

Nicholas Royle – London Gothic

Nina Allan – The Art of Space Travel

Douglas Thompson – The Dissolving Man

John Foxx – The Lake

Georges Simenon – The Two-Penny Bar

Steven Hall – Maxwell’s Demon

Jordan Harrison-Twist – A Few Alterations

Christopher Burns – A Visit To The Bonesetter

David Bevan – The Golden Frog

David Gaffney – The Country Pub

Mariana Enriquez – Things We Lost In The Fire

Yukio Mishima – Thirst For Love

Eric Faye - Nagasaki

Cliff McNish – The Periphery

Terry Grimwood (Editor) – The Monster Book For Girls

Georges Simenon – The Shadow Puppet

Julia Armfield – Our Wives Under The Sea

Evie Nagy – Freedom of Choice

Tom Gould – Mooncop

The Rhymer: an Heredyssey – Douglas Thompson

Julio Cortazar – 62: A Model Kit

Lize Meddings – The Sad Ghost Club

Georges Simenon – The Saint-Fiacre Affair

Hilary Mantel – Fludd

Joanne Dunn - Medlar

Peter Benchley – Jaws

Georges Simenon – The Flemish House

Daniel Polansky – March’s End

Ian Whates – The Double-Edged Sword

Ian Fleming – Dr No

Eric Brown & Keith Brooke – Enigma Season

JG Ballard – The Atrocity Exhibition

That's worked out at 70 books this year, up ten from last year's 60 so I'm happy with that (although no doubt helped by a lot of short books, including several single story chapbooks from Nightjar Press). I should mention that I also proofread and copyedit and adding those novels into the mix would increase the number by about 32 books this year (those which were exceptional also making the above list).

There were a few books this year that I was looking forward to, but which really didn't do it for me. Following Hilary Mantel's death I decided to pick up one of her shorter novels as I hadn't read her before, but "Fludd" didn't engage, and by the time it got into its stride it had already ended, likewise Cortazar's "62: A Model Kit", where I read the first 40 pages very quickly and the final 40 pages very quickly, but between times it was interminable. Every time I went to pick it up I would begin to fall asleep. The book itself has no logical plot or structure, and I felt there were three books here: the one I was reading, the one the author had written, and the one that I was dreaming. I found Eric Faye's "Nagasaki" to be insubstantial, and "Our Wives Under The Sea" by Julia Armfield to be just 'ok' (it's a great premise, but doesn't really do more than you think it might, whilst character arcs are forced). My most anticipated but least liked book of 2022, however, was Steven Hall's "Maxwell's Demon". Having loved his previous "The Raw Shark Texts" I absolutely loathed this. Whereas "Raw Sharks Texts" was a dream, "Maxwell's Demon" is laboured. You can see the stretch marks of incredulity. The central conceit is complex and so explained as though it were cobbled off the internet, the characters are - ironically (or not) - one-dimensional. All of this could have been very clever if it wasn't written quite so boringly. "Maxwell's Demon" is one of those books that only exists to be read as a dissection of itself. There is nothing outside of that circle. There is nothing to engage. There is no connection with the characters and when the reveal comes - and you have to skip through it quickly because it is ponderous - it reinforces what you knew all along. Here is an author writing about his paucity of ideas.

Thankfully, I also read many great books this year. Having decided to read George Simenon's Maigret books in publication order, I read twelve of those in this period. None less than 3/5 stars, and most 4/5 stars, favourites being "The Flemish House", "The Shadow Puppet", and "The Two-Penny Bar". Sticking with crime, "The Mammoth Book of Pulp" fiction, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, contained a high proportion of truly excellent short stories. And sticking with short stories, I read ten short story chapbooks from Nightjar Press, my favourite being "A Visit To The Bonesetter" by Christopher Burns. Nightjar publisher, Nicholas Royle's own collection of short fiction, "London Gothic", was a treat. I'd intended to savour these stories, but raced through them late at night. Sticking with genre work, Priya Sharma's collection "All The Fabulous Beasts", is another delight. It can sometimes be easy to write a weird tale, but it takes effort to make one believable. Sharma's stories, often of beasts and mankind, but not limited to such, resonate with myth and emotion, her characters living these fictions instead of only existing in them. Finally a mention to another great short story collection, "Things We Lost In The Fire" by Mariana Enríquez, which was compelling and absorbing.

Shifting the genre gaze to novels rather than short fiction, I especially enjoyed the horror novel, "The Hollows", by Daniel Church, which was a rollicking read full of great characterisation; "March's End" by Daniel Polansky which I thought was an extraordinary piece of work, not simply in the story told - which is engaging, difficult, triumphant and assured - but in the language used in the telling; John Reynold's "The Flower Path", a great locked-room mystery set within a theatre. Reynolds captures both the theatre and the machinations of a large number of characters exceptionally well, especially since much of the novel is propelled by dialogue. The clipped, formal, discourse between Daidoji Shin and his contemporaries is laced with wry observation, wit, and intelligent asides, and is a joy to read. Equally enjoyable was another detective story of sorts, "Wormhole", by Keith Brooke and Eric Brown, which is an eighty year old cold case murder investigation that stretches across light years and is ceaselessly inventive.

I usually base my top three reads from my Goodreads review record, selecting those which I rated 5/5, however this year only two books reached that rating. Whilst there were several 4/5 reads (including many mentioned above), third place this year would jostle amongst the following books: "The Prestige" by Christopher Priest, "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers, and the excellent novella, "Sorrowmouth" by Simon Avery. Looking back through the list, however, it's clear there's a book which I could have given five stars, so without further ado, here's my third place and then my top two favourite reads of 2022:

In reverse order:

"Tomorrow" by Chris Beckett

Told in jumbled vignettes where a timeline seeks to impress itself upon the reader almost against its better judgment, "Tomorrow" teases and hints at interpretation but is gloriously undefined. We assume we are on Earth (but what of the pterosaurs and sky-monkeys), we assume we are getting to know the protagonist (but do they really know themselves). A reader will attempt to correlate information to impose their own interpretation on any given text (sometimes aligning with the author, sometimes not), and here Beckett strives to undermine that relationship, seeks to wilfully frustrate the reader to good effect. "Tomorrow" is a book about perceptions: how we see people and how people see us, how one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter, how tourists view indigenous races and cultures, how we plant reality over fantasy and vice versa. The reader's perception during the course of this book will also be subtly challenged. And it has a satisfyingly brilliant ending. A book I've recommended throughout the year to others. Read "Tomorrow" today!

"Beware of Pity" by Stefan Zweig

When I picked this up I wasn't expecting a riveting page turner, but I just couldn't put it down! For today's audience, central character Hofmiller's behaviour towards poor sick Edith might be considered callous, but there's an entirely logical train of thought that runs throughout the novel, bolstered by etiquette and in 'trying to do the right thing' even when it's against your better judgment. In that - and in the arguments presented - Hofmiller's actions are wholly relatable. Just as the situation appears to be resolved, along comes another twist. The echo of life which is just one thing after another is all too apparent here. I won't go into detail about the plot, suffice to say that you can't ride two horses successfully simultaneously and when you try to be the best for everyone, you'll fail yourself. This was an unexpected delight and a thoroughly absorbing novel. 

And the winner is:

"The Art of Space Travel and other stories" by Nina Allan

There's a line in one of these stories that neatly summarises this collection: "The result was a kind of abject timelessness, a portrait of a future robbed of its futurity." The fact that this line is from a story called "A Princess of Mars", where the title character neither goes to Mars nor stars in the abandoned film about Mars, indicates the kind of 'space travel' prevalent in these stories. Another story references Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles." Like Bradbury, Allan seeks to examine the human aspect of the experience. Unlike Bradbury, Allan's focus is on those left behind on Earth. Where Mars might be the goal, a suggestion of hope for mankind, none of her protagonists make it there. Another quote: "The only way we can explore the future is to reinvent the world." Allan's prose is precise, cuts like a scapel, acknowledges when clichés represent the best writing, is mundane, virulently intelligent, opinionated, and often wholly wondrous. This is the kind of writing which uses science fiction as a springboard for internal examination (as the best writing does - we desire to know not only what we know, but who we are). Spinning on a ball of evolutionary luck amidst the infinite chaos of non-existence makes us all time and space travellers. We live science fiction, and these stories mirror that. A brilliant collection and easily my best book read in 2022.

Movies:

I watched the following in 2022:


Sicario

Sator

Don’t Look Up

Les Fiancés du Pont Mac Donald (short film)

Dream Work (short film)

Fièvre (1921) (short film)

The Beach

Blanche

The Power of the Dog

North By Northwest

To Catch A Thief

The Great Beauty

Dogtooth

Loro

The Naked Kiss

Luca

Pocahontas

Bad Education

Red Road

La Bouche de Jean-Pierre

Sabotage

Katalin Varga

The Good Dragon

Westworld

Love Affair

Milk (short film)

What Did Jack Do? (short film)

The Girl

Dog (short film)

Carmilla

Wasp (short film)

Wreck It Ralph

Black Medusa

Petite Maman

Ralph Wrecks The Internet

L’Amant Double

The Night Doctor

Turning Red

Drag Me To Hell

I’m So Excited!

Funny Games (1997)

Boarding Gate

Alvin & The Chipmunks

Lamb

Titane

The Third Man

For Ellen

Funny Games U.S.

Dumbo

Ratatouille

A Monster Calls

Accattone

The Hand of God

Lingui

Feast

I Am Not A Witch

L'Atalante

Goodnight Mommy

Inside Out

Autumn Almanac

Arrietty

Sátántangó

Lift To The Scaffold

Open Season

Joy Division

Tusalava (short film)

Lizzie

The Worst Person In The World

Julieta

The Walker

Body

Mug

The Forbidden Room

Ahed’s Knee

House of Gucci

Deception

Entre le Murs

Charles, Dead or Alive

Breaking The Waves

Remorques

Hold The Dark

Hana-Bi

Dogman

Last Breath

Benedetta

Manhattan Murder Mystery

Pleasure

Blood and Black Lace

True Things

Wildnerness (short film)

Mother Joan of the Angels

Alone

Candyman (2021)

Jumanji – Welcome To The Jungle

Event Horizon

Charade

Brute Force

Bergman Island

Au Pan Coupé

Greener Grass

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

The Conversation

The Naked City

Taming The Garden

Masques

Liquorice Pizza

Rabid

The Gold Machine

Blonde

The Mighty Flash

Midsommar

The Exorcist

The General

The White Reindeer

Hellhole

Beverly Hills Cop

The Wolf House

The Gold-Laden Sheep and the Sacred Mountain

Deck The Halls

Hit The Road

Il Buco

After The Curfew

Time To Love

Blank Narcissus (Passion of the Swamp

Marie Antionette

Judgement

Labyrinth

Babes In Toyland

The Wonder

Read My Lips

Both Sides Of The Blade

Uncle Buck

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

In 2021 I watched an astonishing 250 movies. I certainly wasn't expecting to repeat that this year, and as it turns out I've only seen 132 films, almost half that amount. However, that's certainly comparable with the 120 films I watched in 2020, so I'm guessing 2021 was just a blip, and that I need to get over a fixation with numbers and focus on the quality instead. It's still quite a long list to narrow down to my top three, and unlike books I don't have a site equivalent to Goodreads with which to guide my memory.

As usual, however, I'm discounting movies I've previously seen. So this knocks out the great Hitchcock films, "To Catch A Thief" and "North by Northwest", and also rewatches of films that have previously made my top three such as "Dogtooth" directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and "The Great Beauty" directed by Paolo Sorrentino which were both excellent (again) the second time around. I was glad also, to catch up with Samuel Fuller's "The Naked Kiss", which I've been wanting to rewatch for years and which didn't disappoint. Likewise "Westworld" with its relentless protagonist, and the equally relentless "Funny Games" (we rewatched both the original and the remake, both directed by Michael Haneke), remained rewarding. I hadn't seen Jean Vigo's "L'Atalante" in years nor Louis Malle's "Lift To The Scaffold", but enjoyed them both once again and will always recommend them.

Those movies which I found annoying or awful are easy to chronicle, and this includes the execrable "Don't Look Up", a satire so blooming obvious it just feels like being repeatedly punched in the face without any capacity for enjoyment; "Boarding Gate" directed by Olivier Assayas whose films I often enjoy but in this case was a complete mess; another French film, "Titane", which I'd really been looking forward to, but where I felt there was no logic nor purpose and was nowhere near as shocking as it liked to believe it was; "House of Gucci" which was beautifully vacuous, but which until the end I had no idea what it was actually about and when that end came was no wiser for why we had watched it; "Hold The Dark" directed by Jeremy Saulnier (one of the most boring, nonsensical, turgid pieces of crap that I've seen in a long time; overlong, disinteresting, muffled, idiotic, and pointless); and "Labyrinth" which I don't really get the love for. It's clearly of its time, but even so is nonsensical pap. And I was around in the 1980s!.

Despite the above, there were so many films I highlighted as excellent this year that it's really going to be difficult to narrow down my top three, an almost impossible task. Here are those that absolutely deserve a mention, starting with a trio of excellent horror films. "Sator" is a low-key, interesting folk horror film which deliberately under-explains itself to great effect; "Lamb" (directed by Valdimar Jóhannsson) is also low-key, and deftly explores the duality of parenthood being both selfless and selfish, with an absolute killer central conceit; and "Hellhole" directed by Bartosz M. Kowalski). What I thought was going to be a quite mundane flick shapeshifted deliciously oddly through several genres. Towards the end there's a scene of absolute brilliance that totally pulls the rug out from under white male religious power schematics, and then the final scenes are a tour de force of brilliance which will stay in my mind in much the same unsettling manner as the conclusion to Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness" or British film "The Borderlands". Unequivocably loved it. Worth mentioning in the same breath are a couple of other not-quite-horror films: "Black Medusa", a gorgeously-shot Tunisian slipstream-type piece which might be pure style over substance, but what style!; and "Goodnight Mommy", an Austrian psychological film which I found enjoyably disturbing.

This year I seemed to watch a lot of great character-driven films. The best of these would include "Bergman Island", directed by Mia Hansen-Løve). It's an intelligent, contemplative movie of two filmmakers who spend some time on the island of Fårö where Ingmar Bergman lived and made several of his films; "Ahed's Knee" which, despite the offputting title, is a great Israeli film, an inventive, engaging portrait of a left-wing filmmaker threatened to self-censor his art by an oppressive government; likewise, "Hit The Road", is an Iranian comedy-drama  which literally had to be filmed covertly, an irrepressible film capturing the claustrophobia of family life set against a background of departure; "Katalin Varga", Peter Strickland's first feature which was a brilliant, low-key, tense character study of truth and consequences, with a realistic, compelling ending. and Andrea Arnold's "Red Road", a quiet psychological thriller, but also a convincing character study about the aftermath of a personal tragedy.

Other films were more expansive in their goals, but those I favoured didn't lose touch with great characterisation. So we have the delightful - how have I not seen this before - "Charade" directed by Stanley Donen. Described as the best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock never made, and starring Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant and Walter Matthau with an equally strong supporting cast, this comedy mystery caper features some cracking dialogue, brilliant one-liners, and some excellent twists. Perfect from start to finish. Seek it out! I also thoroughly enjoyed the wonderful "Hand of God" directed by Paolo Sorrentino (one of my favourite directors and featuring Toni Servillo, one of my favourite actors); "Liquorice Pizza" directed by another favourite, Paul Thomas Anderson, a great character study which hit all the right spots; Woody Allen's "Manhatten Murder Mystery" which was an absolute riot; Joachim Trier's "The Worst Person In The World", another favourite director with a great character study, although perhaps not quite as perfect as his other films; "Marie Antoinette" directed by Sofia Coppola which was satisfyingly sumptuous; "Blonde", directed by Andrew Dominik, which I felt was a perfect adaptation of the book by the same name by Joyce Carol Oates (which is not to say it is a perfect Marilyn biopic); and for those who seek satire a gazillion times better than "Don't Look Up" mentioned above, try "Greener Grass" written and directed by Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe. This is a bizarrely satirical piece on modern life which is comic and troublesome in turns, reminding me a bit of John Water's films: bold colours, almost cartoonish and great fun.

And so we go on. Here are a few more recommendations: "What Did Jack Do?", a short film directed by David Lynch, where whilst watching it I became almost giddy with excitement; "Carmilla", an excellent adaptation of the Le Fanu novel, quietly played to good effect; "Autumn Almanac", a Béla Tarr directed film where a claustrophobic household teeters between monologues and sporadic bursts of violence, in an existential, beautifully shot, expressionistic piece of cinema; "Deception", the 2021 French film directed by Arnaud Desplechin, elevated by the excellent script and central performances of Denis Podalydès and Léa Seydoux. Natural, unassuming, engaging, literary. Also "Hana-Bi", a modern film noir directed by Takeshi Kitano who also stars; "Brute Force" directed by Jules Dassin, a very dark prison noir film; and also "The Naked City" from the same director. A bona fide classic! And finally in this section, the Turkish film "Time To Love" directed by Metin Erksan. A great black and white film with some stunning imagery about a poor painter who falls in love with the photograph of a woman, but who rejects her when she (the actual woman) realises his feelings. A gem.

Are you still with me? So many good films this year. I've narrowed my final selection down to seven, and any of the following four might easily have been in my top three. Here goes: "Petite Maman" (2021, directed by Céline Sciamma) is a subtle, slipstreamy piece of magic about loss and childhood and the bleeding inbetween; "The Forbidden Room" directed by Guy Maddin, quite unlike anything I've ever seen before, enchantingly crazy, an aching delight; "Breaking The Waves" directed by Lars Von Trier; utterly superb and heartbreaking and oddly life-affirming; and the most recent film here, "Both Sides of the Blade" directed by Claire Denis, a brutally affecting dialogue revolving around a disintegrating relationship, wonderfully acted by Vincent Lindon and Juliette Binoche. The final scene between them is superbly written, with the offer of undeserved conciliation from Lindon's character to Binoche's literally jawdropping, and yet as matter-of-fact as a simple statement. I was in floods.

Anyway, whilst as usual I get the feeling that another day might produce marginally different results, today here are my top three movies that I saw for the first time in 2022.

Again, in reverse order:

"Loro" (2018) - Paolo Sorrentino

I'm a massive fan of Sorrentino. His films are expansive, ebullient, larger-than-life affairs, and starring in the best of them is Toni Servillo, an actor at the absolute height of his powers, who can enchant, terrify, and cause wonderment in equal measure, who I absolutely adore. Ostensibly, the film is about the group of businessmen and politicians – the Loro (Them) from the title – who live and act near to media tycoon and politician Silvio Berlusconi, but you don't need to have any pre-knowledge of that character to enjoy this film. It's simply a beautifully shot and quite brilliantly acted script. Sorrentino is superb as usual with his storytelling, and Servillo is enigmatic and multi-faceted. It's effusive and excessive and spot on. I loved it.

"Julieta" (2016) -  Pedro Almodovar

Almodovar can be thought of as a director of excess, with extravagant characters populating his films, acting as foils for Almodovar himself, and full of colour and light; however I've found it's when he tones down that his brilliance truly shines, and "Julieta" is one of those pictures. It's a restrained and ultimately moving piece of cinema, beautifully pitched and well-told, exploring guilt, loss and abandonment. It wasn't the film I expected, and so hit home all the more because of it. There may have been tears. An assured, affecting piece of work.

And the winner is...

"Sátántangó" (1994) - Béla Tarr

If you only watch one seven and a half hour black and white Hungarian film this year, then make it this one. I confess we didn't watch it in one sitting, but over four days. It's a masterpiece of filmmaking. The cinematography, the framing, and the storytelling are brilliant. It isn't simply a long film, there are lengthy tracking shots too, and some with several minutes of complete inaction. There's a hypnotic, soporific effect to most of the scenes, but it is absolutely never boring. I was spellbound throughout. There are numerous favourite scenes, but I suppose the most obvious is the dance scene which rivals that in Godard's "Bande a Part" for delirious happiness, but also moments where the characters appear to freeze - creating tableaux that invite contemplation. Sure, for some the film could be seen to be "plodding, plodding, plodding along", but invest in it and it's wholly worthwhile. Consider that the average Hollywood movie changes shots every ten seconds, and "Sátántangó" contains numerous ten minute shots or thereabouts, often slow, tracking sequences and has only around 150 shots in total over that timeframe. This is pure unadulterated art. I loved it and there's no way it couldn't have been my favourite film watched during 2022.

Before we move onto my favourite records, let's just pause for a moment, because 2022 contained the death of one of the most important people in history.

Records:

I listened to the following full-length albums in 2022:

Taylor Swift – Red (Taylor’s Version)

Kacey Musgraves – Golden Hour

Maximo Park – Our Earthly Pleasures

The Murder Capital – When I Have Fears

The Libertines – Up The Bracket

Coeur de Pirate – Perséides

Low – Things We Lost In The Fire

Viagra Boys – Street Worms

The Stranglers – Rattus Norvegicus

Coeur de Pirate – Impossible à aimer

The Stranglers – Black and White

Brigitte Bardot – Bubblegum

Brigitte Bardot – Réveillon avec Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot – Brigitte Bardot

Low – Ones and Sixes

Echo & The Bunnymen – Porcupine

Echo & The Bunnymen – Crocodiles

Echo & The Bunnymen – Heaven Up Here

Maximo Park – Nature Always Wins

Big Joanie – Sistahs

The Mountain Goats – Goths

Blonde Redhead – 23

Blonde Redhead – Penny Sparkle

Blonde Redhead – Barragán

Hugh Cornwell – Monster

The Stranglers – La Folie

Hitsujibungaku – POWERS

Low – HEY WHAT

Taylor Swift – Lover

Maximo Park – The National Health

Taylor Swift – folklore

The Lovely Eggs – I Am Moron

The Lovely Eggs – This Is Eggland

The Stranglers – Feline

Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg

Hugh Cornwell – Guilty

Hugh Cornwell – Hooverdam

Hugh Cornwell – Hi Fi

The Lovely Eggs – If You Were Fruit

Aldous Harding – Warm Chris

New Order – Movement

Wet Leg – Wet Leg

Amyl & The Sniffers – Guided By Angels

Mattiel – Georgia Gothic

Red Guitars – Slow To Fade

Mattiel – Satis Factory

Maximo Park – Quicken The Heart

Hitsujibungaku – Our Hope

The Residents – Metal Meat & Bone

Mattiel – Mattiel

The xx – xx

The Fall – New Facts Emerge

Peaness – World Full Of Worry

The Fall – Bend Sinister

Coeur de Pirate – En cas de tempête, ce jardin sera fermé

Coeur de Pirate – Blonde

Public Image Ltd – Metal Box

Public Image Ltd – Album

Public Image Ltd – Public Image (First Issue)

Viagra Boys – Street Worms

Snapped Ankles – Stunning Luxury

Public Image Ltd – The Is PiL

New Found Glory – Sticks and Stones

New Found Glory – Makes Me Sick

Public Image Ltd – This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get

Public Image Ltd – What the World Needs Now...

PINS – Hot Slick

Buzzcocks – Singles Going Steady

Public Image Ltd – That What Is Not

Sonic Youth – Goo

Jean-Michel Jarre – Equinoxe

Brix Smith & Marty Wilson-Piper – Lost Angeles

The Residents – Commercial Album

Serious Drinking – The Revolution Starts At Closing Time

Half Man Half Biscuit – The Voltarol Years

Jeffrey Lewis – 12 Crass Songs

Belle and Sebastian – A Bit Of Previous

TV Priest – Uppers 

TV Priest – My Other People

Blionde Redhead - In an Expression of the Inexpressible 

X-Ray Spex – Germfree Adolescents

The Undertones – The Positive Touch

Polly Scattergood – In This Moment

Devo – Something For Everybody

Viagra Boys – Cave World

The B-52-s – The B-52’s

Taylor Swift – evermore

Hitsujibungaku – OOPARTS

Parry Gripp – Mini-Party

Flaming Lips – Embryonic 

Los Bitchos – Let The Festivities Begin!

Viagra Boys – Street Worms

Sex Pistols – Never Mind The Bollocks

Coeur de Pirate – Roses

Charlie Megira – Da Abtomatic Meisterzinger Mambo Chic

Maximo Park – Apply Some Pressure

Maximo Park – Too Much Information

Taylor Swift – 1989

Taylor Swift – Midnights

Hugh Cornwell – Moments of Madness

Dry Cleaning – Stumpwork

Cocteau Twins – Head Over Heels

Modern Woman – Dogs Fighting In My Dream

Flaming Lips – Oczy Mlody

The Residents – Freak Show

B-52’s – Whammy! 

The Residents – Triple Trouble

Kate Bush – The Hounds of Love

Coeur de Pirate – Coeur de Pirate

Clouds – Loot

Kate Bush – The Sensual World

Lande Hekt – House Without A View

Bedouin Soundclash – We Will Meet In A Hurricane

Julee Cruise – The Voice of Love

That's exactly 111 albums which is 11 more than I listened to last year and which surprised me as I thought I'd heard a lot less. My listening habits can be broken down into five patterns: music listened through headphones whilst cooking, music listened through headphones whilst recreational cycling during the summer, music listened through headphones whilst writing fiction, music listened to whilst driving, and - now - music listened to in the living room with our new record player. Yes, 2022 saw us buy a record player which is the first time I've had one since the year 2000. All my vinyl is now out of storage and back in the front room.

As I've done with my book and movie list I will discount anything previously listened to. And unlike movies and books (which - even with favourites - I rarely read/see more than a handful of occasions in a lifetime), music is an entirely different kettle of fish and predominantly most of these will be re-listens.

Revisits this year included old favourites such as Maximo Park, Taylor Swift, The Stranglers, and X-Ray Spex. And as this year also saw me attend 18 gigs (the most I've ever attended in one year due to Covid-reshiftings and a general desire to get out more), quite a few of the relistens revolved around preparing for those: so large numbers of Echo & The Bunnymen, Hugh Cornwell, Public Image Ltd, and Coeur de Pirate. Of especial note was replaying The Red Guitars classic, "Slow To Fade", and seeing them play it live which marked a 38 year gap between gigs for the band (and, by default, for me seeing them). And listening again to Blonde Redhead's "In an Expression of the Inexpressible", as I tend to play their later, less ascerbic records.

The latter half of the year saw me writing a 50,000 word novel, "Observations In Tendernesss". I wrote the entire book in (mostly) forty minute bursts whilst listening to the  album "Equinoxe" by Jean-Michel Jarre.

Special mentions to the following: Coeur de Pirate for two albums, the instrumental piano record, "Perséides" and the poppier, dancier, "Impossible à aimer"; The Lovely Eggs' "I Am Moron" (a new find for me this year, a blast!); Aldous Harding's soft "Warm Chris"; Half Man Half Biscuit's lyrical romp, "The Voltarol Years"; Belle and Sebastian returning to form with "A Bit of Previous", and Jeffrey Lewis' brilliant take on twelve Crass Songs with the album titled, "12 Crass Songs." I greatly enjoyed Charlie Megira's "Da Abtomatic Meisterzinger Mambo Chic", TV Priest's "Uppers", the Hitsujibungaku albums "OOPARTS" and "Our Hope", and Juliee Cruise's "The Voice of Love".

This year saw the release of some great albums, only one of which making my top three however. Mattiel's "Georgia Gothic" is a strong album, but for me doesn't match the rawness of her first two records; "World Full of Worry" by the irrepressible Peaness; Taylor Swift's "Midnights" is a grower, but is her most patchy record since the execrable "Reputation" from which some of the beats seem to linger (even if "You're On Your Own Kid" would easily make my top five of her songs of all time); Hugh Cornwell's "Moments of Madness" contains some great tunes, but doesn't have the themic quatlity of his last great record, "Monster"; TV Priest's "My Other People" is a powerful outing, as is Dry Cleaning's' "Stumpwork", which came close to making my top three this year. Supporting TV Priest this year were Modern Woman, who absolutely blew me away (I have never bought a t-shirt from the support band before). Their mini-abum, "Dogs Fighting In My Dreams", is a great taster of things to come. And The Residents delivered with the soundtrack album to "Triple Trouble", a strong selection of music to accompany a film I've yet to see, with resonances from their previous albums (specifically "Vileness Fats" which I need to listen to again). The only disappointment in 2022 was Wet Leg's album, "Wet Leg", which - after a string of exciting singles - felt to be more of a damp squib.

Ultimately, though, my top three new (to me) records played this year are as follows (in reverse order):

"Things We Lost In The Fire" (2001) - Low

Low have been recommended to me for a long while, but this was the first time I'd given them a listen. As it turned out, I then chose to write to this record, finding it perfect to gain inspiration for my half of "Secondhand Daylight", a time-travel novel I've co-written with Eugen Bacon this year and which is being published in 2023. The lo-fi tones of this record were a perfect accompaniment, and it bears repeated listenings. Songs such as "Sunflower", "Laser Beam" and "Whore" were amongst my favourites, but it's the closer, "In Metal", which affected me the most. A brilliant piece of songwriting. So sad to discover that half of Low - Mimi Parker - died in November. I look forward to ploughing through their back catalogue.

"Cave World" (2022) - Viagra Boys

I discovered this band at the tail end of last year, and thoroughly enjoyed their previous two albums, which ramped up the anticipation for this one. In some respects a little more polished, and with themes that carry over from their previous reocrds, "Cave World" is, however, a solid little beast. From the relentless opening of "Baby Criminal" with its tongue-in-cheek lyrics ("Used to be a baby / now he's just a criminal"). to the Jocko Homo-esque ending in "Return To Monke" ("leave society / be a monkey"), Viagra Boys send up the band that they are. A great concept album, imminently quotable and danceable. Roll on to seeing them live next year.

And the winner is...

"POWERS" (2020) - Hitsujibungaku

This band was one of my favourite discoveries during 2022 and I've now listened to all of their records, with this one rising to the top every time. A basic lead guitar, bass guitar, drums combo, singing in Japanese so I'm going to have to trust that the lyrics are as great as the music, Hitsujibungaku are just a musical joy. Great indie guitar riffs, good melodies, a certain relentless type of pop song. I find myself smiling a lot whilst listening to this record and it's easily my favourite spin of 2022. It's fresh, assured, and dynamic. Cateh a YouTube performance. You won't regret it.

So that's it, my summary of what I read, watched and listened to in 2022! Drop back in next year, but as has become usual I'll end with a song that's captivated me during this year and which comes courtesy of my 10yr old daughter. Chanelling DEVO but managing not to be annoying, here's "Pancake Robot" by Parry Gripp.

My Writing Year 2022

As has become annual I thought I'd write a quick blog post as to my literary achievements during 2022.

Starting with short fiction, I wrote the following stories: "The Enfilade", "Content", "Keepers" and "An Absence of Ghosts". This is a further reduction of output in writing short fiction that has continued over the past few years, but it's not like I haven't been busy and I'm not complaining, because in addition to those stories I co-wrote the time travel novel, "Secondhand Daylight" with Eugen Bacon, and also have just finished the first draft of another short novel, "Observations In Tenderness". I would therefore estimate I've written 100,000 words of new fiction this year.

I sold five short stories this year. "The Malaise Trap" as a standalone chapbook published in a dual language edition by Brazillian publisher, Raphus Press, "The Natural Environment" to the Ballardian anthology, "Reports From The Deep End", edited by Maxim Jakubowski and Rick McGrath to be published by Titan Books, "The Enfilade" to the final issue of Black Static magazine, "Keepers" to "At The Lighthouse" anthology, edited by Sophie Essex for Eibonvale Press, and "An Absence of Ghosts" will appear in an edition of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction.

The following three stories were published this year: "Something To Believe In" within the anthology, "Crossing The Tees #5", "Throttle Body" as a standalone chapbook through nightjar press, and "The Malaise Trap" as described above in a beautiful edition from Raphus Press.

The big news is that in March this year I sold my Hollywood-death-themed short story collection, "Candescent Blooms" to Salt Publishing, and it appeared in October, garnering wide plaudits including an extensive five star review from The Telegraph. But in addition to that, the aforementioned collaborative novel, "Secondhand Daylight", has subsequently been sold to Cosmic Egg Books and will be published in October 2023. So good news on the book front.

With my publishing hat on, Head Shot Press published four books in 2022. These were the novels "Debris" by Andrew Humphrey and "The Clutches of Mimi Bouchard" by John Travis, and the short story collections "A Punch To The Heart" by Andrew Humphrey and "Death Has A Thousand Faces" by Maxim Jakubowksi. I have also edited the crime noir anthology, "Bang!", which will be published by Head Shot in 2023. The dedicated website for the press can be found here.

I also have a handful of stories awaiting publication that were originally accepted in previous years, and a few other projects are also under consideration by various agents/publishers, as they were last year. 

So that's it for 2022. I have a few things in mind already for next year and am looking to see where they take me. Onwards!

Throttle Body

My short story titled "Throttle Body" has recently been published as a standalone chapbook from Nightjar Press, and as has become usual I'm writing a few words discussing how the story came to be written. There may be spoilers within.

Like most of my fiction, the idea sprang from the title. Having some issues with the car one summer my partner was looking through the manual and mentioned something called a throttle body. This is a tube-shaped housing that contains a flat valve (butterfly) that rotates to vary the amount of air entering an engine. Clearly the name is incredibly evocative and the idea of throttling as a means to reduce an intake of air obviously has connotations beyond the mechanical. I filed the title away.

Sometime later I was watching a film where a couple were having a conversation whilst driving. I'm always fascinated by how long someone can take their eyes off the road to talk directly at their passenger in films, but not only this, the use of hand movements to suggest they are actually driving (as opposed to sitting in a studio) is always exaggerated. If those movements were to be mimicked, a vehicle would be veering left and right on an otherwise straight road. The artifice of driving within film seemed to connect to the Throttle Body title. And then - of course - I remembered those occasions where a deer is hit by teenagers that foreshadows the plot of many a horror film. The fact that my own teenage daughter was learning to drive also added fuel to this nightmare scenario, and the basic structure of the plot - where a film-lecturing father hits something whilst dropping his daughter back home - came almost fully-formed from the above. Adding a sprinkling of my usual what-is-real-what-isn't-real element to the story, and Throttle Body was born.

Here's a bit of it: 

Ward sighed. “You recognise it for what it is, yeah. It’s a foreshadowing device. The scenario for hitting the animal unfolds in a way that will allude to or demonstrate primal aspects of how the driver is going to have to deal with the later horrific conflict.”

“Textbook horror, textbook Dad.”

“You know what I’m saying.”

“Just shut up and watch the movie. If I wanted a lecture I’d have enrolled in your uni class.”

Ward sighed. These moments between them were glazed with expectations and remonstrations. Whilst their relationship had improved since Indy had found her own space, it was almost a conscious effort not to replay old roles. However fraught they had been, an undeniable familiarity made them almost comfortable. Ward was tired of arguing – especially tired of arguing needlessly – and it wouldn’t take much to kickstart trouble again. He folded himself back into the film. It wasn’t a piece of art, it was a roadmap to getting them back together.

Throttle Body is published as a limited edition signed chapbook through Nightjar Press. It retails at £3 in paperback plus postage. It can be bought here.

As regular readers are aware, I write my short stories listening to music on repeat. In this case, throughout the entire writing session, I listened to the Raveonettes' album Observator on repeat. I always find their music evocative when writing, and this was no exception.

Sarcoline (Grace Kelly)

My short story collection, Candescent Blooms,  was published by Salt Publishing recently. I've previously posted here with regards to the background to the collection, and the fact that twelve Hollywood actors whose lives ended prematurely are the main characters in each of the twelve stories. As stated in that post, the intention in the run-up to publication is to focus on each actor with some snippets of information (both about them and the writing of their stories). These posts will follow the same format for each. Our twelfth (and final) character is Grace Kelly.

1: the reason for the title of the story

I can't remember where I first heard the word sarcoline, although as my partner, the poet Sophie Essex, was working on a book of colour poems (published as Some Pink Star), it might have come out of that. Sarcoline being flesh-coloured. There's a certain transparency in clothing which is flesh-coloured, and a certain honesty to Grace Kelly. Whilst there is no direct link to her, it felt an ideal fit.

2: why I chose that actor

Grace Kelly's fairytale wedding to Prince Rainer of Monaco tragically ended following a car crash. I adore Grace in her films - especially Hitchcock's Rear Window (that slo-mo kiss!) - so whilst her death occurred comparatively recently (1982 being recent to this old codger) it was a no-brainer to include her.

3: one 'gift' that enhanced the story

The metallic green Rover P6 3500 that Grace was driving when she had her accident was subsequently crushed, cubed, and dropped into the Mediterranean sea on the orders of her husband. As a result of which, the colour green or a green cube foreshadows Grace's life on several occasions during my story.

4: one thing I never knew about them

The ballerina Margot Fonteyn taught Grace to dance The Twist.

5: an extract from the story

In her room at the Barbizon Hotel for Women she lays diagonally across the bed. The tape recorder squeaks on rewind. She simultaneously presses record and play. Speaks: fairytales tell imaginary stories. Me, I’m a living person. I exist. On the bed beside her lies the script for Strindberg’s The Father. She reaches for a pencil and taps it against her teeth. Her legs extend upwards, crossed at the ankle. Within a coffee cup, dregs congeal. This scene is lit by the non-Technicolor glow of her bedside lamp, its shade muted yellow as the beam.

6: what music I listened to whilst I wrote it.

Perhaps incongruously, I wrote the entirety of this story whilst listening to a cover of the Ricky Nelson song, Sweeter Than You, by Dr John Cooper Clarke and Hugh Cornwell. But just listen, it's perfect, isn't it?

This concludes a series of blog posts regarding the characters in my new short story collection, Candescent Blooms. If you've stayed the journey and are interested, please buy Candescent Blooms here.