Readers and writers blog

What a pleasure it can be to read good writing, a pleasure I’ve received a number of times from works contributed to R&W Blog and one I’m glad to share from our latest contributor, a young Englishman named Luke Darbyshire.

It’s like James Joyce meets Raymond Chandler meets A Clockwork Orange.

Really, that’s how Darbyshire’s short story, ‘To Remember and To Forget,’ struck me. His tale of Bobby, a rather idiosyncratic young man, and how he deals with his father’s death, his mother’s toiletries, his friend Jim and their mutual love, Anna, has qualities of the dark poetry of Joyce, the mystery of Chandler and even that dystopian craziness found in the best-known work of Anthony Burgess.

In fact, a game Bobby plays while riding a double-decker bus reminds me of the ‘clockwork’ youth, Alex, in Burgess’ tale.

And consider Bobby’s observations of mourners after his father’s funeral:

He could hear (his mother’s) relatives in the kitchen, attendant at the makeshift counter bar: ‘Yes, I’ll take ice, and he’ll have a Guinness.’ Plastic cups. Paper plates. Sandwich quarters.

‘Never too early, never too late — that’s what I say!’ a rotund red-faced man said, guffawing crumbs and tuna mayonnaise down his black shirt as he struggled with a tumbler of cheap whisky and a plate of sausage rolls and warm quiche that, sat on cold porcelain at 3 a.m. the following morning, even redder in the face from burst blood vessels, spewing a red/brown mixture similar in consistency to poorly made risotto from a torn sphincter, he would dearly regret. ‘You hear that, eh?’

‘Hey, at least maintain we’re here out of respect,’ the red-faced man’s friend responded in a murmur. He glanced back at the bar, eyeing her sister who was stood beside it in determined resolve, focusing her entire essence into emptying each can into its glass and serving each slab of ice with subtlety sufficient to prevent the liquid from rising forth in response and, achieving height greater than that of the sides of the glass it had been placed in, forming alcoholic puddles across the counter. He hesitated for a second, studying her eyes, and continued, ‘Darling, could you give me a top up on this; it’s all head.’ She opened another black-and-white can — choking down a sob, all too noticeably — and tilted her head to inspect her work as she poured. She scanned the room self-aware from under her fringe before handing the glass back. ‘Thanks, dear. We were all so sorry to hear; you must be doing terrible,’ he dissimulated, tilting his head, narrowing his eyes and arching their brows in kind pity, noting who noticed in his peripheral vision. She nodded, and the corners of her mouth crept up her face, but the main stretch of pink tissue held flat, firm against her teeth, ‘Yes,’ and continued to gaze through the strands of her hair cast across her forehead.

Darbyshire currently is on a writing sabbatical after leaving the world of corporate finance and heading for studies at university, probably toward a career as an English teacher.

Finally today, as promised, another new short story from Hugh Yonn entitled ‘Me and the Good Ol’ IRS.’ If you’ve read Yonn’s first two contributions to us, you’ll guess there’s a certain amount of irony in his latest work.

– Sid Leavitt

NOTE:

The image above is the Knight Bus, a fantasy triple-decker from the movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.