M. John Harrison is eighty today. For an overview of his life and work, I would recommend this recent video from Steve Andrews, aka Outlaw Bookseller, who guides us through the chronology of Mike’s novels and stories with the help of his gorgeous collection of first editions.
The first story of Mike’s I read was ‘The Ice Monkey’, in a 1980 anthology called New Terrors 2, edited by Ramsey Campbell. I stumbled across this little paperback in a second-hand bookshop somewhere, and bought it primarily because it contained a story by Chris – ‘The Miraculous Cairn’ – that I had not yet read. This would have been in the late 1990s or very early 2000s, before Chris and I met and before I sold my first story.
Anthologies are strange beasts, their importance (or otherwise) becoming clear only with the passage of time. Looking down that table of contents now, ‘The Miraculous Cairn’ and ‘The Ice Monkey’ shine out clearly as flecks of gold in a pan of river gravel. When I first happened upon New Terrors 2, my own journey as a writer was barely begun. I kept rereading both stories obsessively, Chris’s scintillating ‘episode’ in the Dream Archipelago sequence as an internal, foundational lodestone and Mike’s gritty hyperrealism as a way of writing – of putting words together – that I’d been searching for without knowing it existed. I’d heard his name but not read his work. This story – the twisting of an ostensibly familiar urban landscape into something more liminal, less knowable – seemed to offer something of my own anti-mimetic apprehension of the mundane, realised in a language I responded to on a gut level but could not dream of emulating.
Since then, I’ve read everything he’s written, more or less. I’ve made some progress as a writer, but the importance of Mike’s achievement has never lessened for me. I still love ‘The Ice Monkey’, which remains – as it does in the story – a kind of talisman, a single image that is simultaneously the embodiment of an entire oeuvre.
We are very lucky to have a new MJH novel to look forward to in 2026. In addition to that, Serpent’s Tail are reissuing his 1992 masterpiece The Course of the Heart in just a couple of weeks’ time.
И падали два башмачка Со стуком на пол. И воск слезами с ночника На платье капал.
И все терялось в снежной мгле Седой и белой. Свеча горела на столе, Свеча горела.
На свечку дуло из угла, И жар соблазна Вздымал, как ангел, два крыла Крестообразно.
Мело весь месяц в феврале, И то и дело Свеча горела на столе, Свеча горела.
*
{Snow fell and fell across the world fell then and ever a candle burned on the table a candle burned as midges in summer swarm to the flame so the snowflakes swarmed to the doorstep and to the window frame the blizzard scratched upon the pane circles and spears a candle burned on the table a candle burned upon the lighted ceiling the shadows locked crossed arms crossed feet crossed fate as two shoes fell to the floor from the bed so the tears of wax from the candle dripped on the cast-off dress and all was lost in the greyish gloom a candle burned on the table a candle burned and when the flame flickered in the icy draught love’s heat raised it up again wings crossed like an angel’s all through the month of February the snow fell then and ever a candle burned on the table a candle burned.)
Samhain, the end of autumn and the beginning of winter. Memories of Hallowe’en when I was a child, the dozens of paper demon faces I would cut out and colour, slipping them between the pages of books, under tea mugs and into cupboards, so that even months into the new year they still turned up unexpectedly, little ghosts from the past.
Memories of my grandmother, who would make up a new Hallowe’en story for me every year, then on the morning of the 1st of November I would hear her in the kitchen, putting on the kettle and singing the hymn for All Saints Day, her voice her one extravagance, that and her storytelling, my twin inheritance from her.
It has felt difficult to write here, lately. How many times can you say that you miss someone without the words becoming shadows of themselves?
Samhain.
Samhuinn.
Sauin.
Some of you will know that I have been contracted to complete the biography of JG Ballard that Chris was working on before he died. Our book, as we came to think of it, has been a source of comfort, consolation and huge satisfaction to me through this difficult year. This is without doubt the most demanding and challenging project I have yet undertaken, for all kinds of reasons, but I am happy to say it has been going well and is getting closer to completion. Coming to know a writer’s work in such intimate detail is both a privilege and an inspiration. Chris and I talked about the project endlessly. He knew that this is how I would be spending the year, basically, and knowing that he knew has been a strength and continues to be.
My thoughts are turning also to what will come next. I have ideas, and they excite me, which I know is a good thing. Samhain is all about return, reappraisal, reconnection. Lighting the fire.
We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all…
I remember despising the book Dylan Thomas’s widow Caitlin wrote after her husband’s death, Leftover Life to Kill. I remember being dismissive of, even censorious about, her ‘self-pity’, her ‘whining’, her ‘dwelling on it.’ Leftover Life to Kill was published in 1957. I was twenty-two years old. Time is the school in which we learn.
My beloved Chris passed away this evening. He was completely peaceful, and surrounded by love.
Ceremonies for Candlemas
Eve by Robert Herrick
Down with the rosemary and bays,
Down with the misletoe;
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box, for show.
The holly hitherto did sway;
Let box now domineer,
Until the dancing Easter-day,
Or Easter’s eve appear.
Then youthful box, which now hath grace
Your houses to renew,
Grown old, surrender must his place
Unto the crisped yew.
When yew is out, then birch comes in,
And many flowers beside,
Both of a fresh and fragrant kin,
To honour Whitsuntide.
Green rushes then, and sweetest bents,
With cooler oaken boughs,
Come in for comely ornaments,
To re-adorn the house.
Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;
New things succeed, as former things grow old.
2023 has been, more than any other I can remember, a year of two halves: the first productive, forward-looking, full of excitement over new projects; the second blackly surreal with Chris’s cancer diagnosis and the gradually encroaching impacts of the disease.
I want to say first that Chris’s resilience, fighting spirit and wickedly subversive sense of humour have been in evidence throughout. He is a rare individual, a deep thinker, a very brave man.
I want to say also that books have proved if anything even more important to us this year than they have always been: reading them, writing them, talking and thinking about them. One of the hardest things to bear has been Chris’s increasing inability to find refuge in books, not through lack of desire but through simple tiredness.
Hearing him read aloud the opening pages of The War of the Worlds for a French documentary film segment back in November is a memory that will remain with me for a long time to come.
The ten books I read in 2023 that have meant the most to me are:
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote. One from the first half of the year, and mind-bendingly good. So well made the joins are flawless. For anyone interested in true crime, whether as reader or as writer, this remains the gold standard.
In Ascension by Martin MacInnes. I’ve followed MacInnes’s work from the beginning and for me he is one of the most interesting and important younger British writers working today. In Ascension – humane, provocative and radiantly beautiful – is a book everyone should read.
The Last Supper: a summer in Italy by Rachel Cusk. As a woman writing, Cusk has always been fearless in putting her intellect on the page and for this alone she is a hero to me. This book is about everything – art, time, mortality, belonging – and the kind you could reread every year and gain something new. Her forthcoming novel Parade is one of my most anticipated publications of 2024.
Wish I Was Here by M. John Harrison. The writer’s anti-Bible. There is nothing about this unique exploration of memory, autobiography, place and the fantastic that I do not love.
The Lost Child by Julie Myerson. This is the first book in a long time that I have just sat down and read, cover to cover, when I’ve not been on a train. Like Cusk, Myerson is a writer who has often found herself reaping the whirlwind simply for being a woman who examines her own experience with an unflinching eye. Her pursuit of the forgotten watercolourist Mary Yelloly is every bit as compelling as her account of her son Jake’s cannabis addiction, which is precisely what makes The Lost Child a masterclass in autofiction.
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis. Even though the overblown dramatics of its final section annoy me, I still count this book among my most enjoyed of 2023 as it combines those two rare qualities: propulsive readability with effortlessly beautiful sentences. Can I call this a crime romp? Yes I can.
Babysitter by Joyce Carol Oates. The opposite of a crime romp – Babysitter is too dark and tense for that – this is nonetheless another Oates classic, garnering way too little attention at the time of publication. Dreamlike, nightmarish, a fascinatingly original treatment of true crime themes.
Possession by A. S. Byatt. I am so glad I decided to finally catch up with this one. A beautifully wrought novel, everything a Booker winner should be and worthy of its literary godfather Umberto Eco. The poems alone are a significant achievement. So typical of the industry that the editor initially implored Byatt to cut them out.
Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman. I thank God for this book. It reminds me of who I am and what I want to do.
Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies by Elizabeth Winkler. Forget all the other conspiracy theory books – if you want to get under the skin of cognitive dissonance, go and read this one. Superbly researched and articulated, this exploration of author identity and why – in defiance of Barthes – it does actually matter is as entertaining as it is important.
Wishing everyone a fruitful and spiritually prosperous 2024. May it be a more peaceful space to inhabit than 2023.
As I watched a recent Booktube video in which Eric Karl Anderson aka Lonesome Reader celebrates a decade of book blogging by naming his ten favourite books from the past ten years, I found I couldn’t resist the temptation of following in his footsteps . Of course, it is inevitable that the choices I make right now will be governed by what I am drawn to right now, rather than what might have seemed more important to me back then. But that makes things, if anything, even more interesting. It has been a little over a decade since I first started keeping detailed records of the books I read – and what I think of them. Every year at around this time I open a new Word document where I can make a note of upcoming releases as and when I hear about them, a document that will eventually become my tally of books considered and discussed and read in the year to come. These lists act as a reminder not only of those books I do actually end up reading, but also of those that catch my interest, however fleetingly, books that I might return to in subsequent years. Each of these documents as I look at them now powerfully brings back the literary flavour and texture of the year in question. As a record of the changing literary landscape, of how my interests as a reader and writer have evolved in new directions, I find them fascinating.
2013 – the year Eleanor Catton won the Booker for her superbly achieved megatext The Luminaries. But my pick of the year – then and now – is Richard House’s The Kills, which made the Booker longlist but should have gone further. It remains as strong in my mind in 2023 as during the month I spent reading it a decade ago.
2014 – a weirdly awful reading year, in which much of what I read seems in retrospect to be of zero consequence. Among the few titles from 2014 that still resonate, Joyce Carol Oates’s The Accursed is the one I still think about with love and awe.
2015 – another depressingly inconsequential reading year in which I was clearly struggling to find direction. Sarah Hall’s The Wolf Border, with its piercingly beautiful landscape writing and impassioned defence of personal freedom remains a favourite. The fact that I can still remember where I was when I was reading it – on the train to and from Cornwall sometime in late summer- stands testament to that fact.
2016 – a fascinating reading year, in which my current interests are clearly beginning to solidify. A toss-up between Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser and Martin MacInnes’s Infinite Ground.
2017 – the year of the Sharke, and many fond recollections. Memories too of reading Paul McAuley’s Fairyland while on the Paris Metro. No contest though for book of the year, which is Katie Kitamura’s A Separation, a touchstone work and one I am planning to reread very soon. Kitamura’s expert manipulation of the mystery template continues to be inspirational.
2018 – reading through this year’s list brings back powerful memories of what was clearly a breakthrough year for me in terms of thinking about my own writing. With a dozen titles at least in contention, I am going to plump for This House of Grief by Helen Garner, if only because I very recently read her novel The Spare Room, which reminded me so powerfully of how much I love and admire her, and how much territory she has conquered for women who write.
2019 – on trains a lot, doing stuff for The Dollmaker. Also the Dublin Worldcon, reading all of Ben Lerner and discovering the genius of Mary Gaitskill. Top pick though goes to The Porpoise by Mark Haddon, which is a glorious and wonderful feat of experimental storytelling and didn’t get anywhere near enough attention.
2020 – as with 2018 I find it almost impossible to single out one book as emblematic of what was a stellar reading year, with so much achieved in terms of thinking and writing. It would be wrong of me not to mention my beloved Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson, Born Yesterday by Gordon Burn and Strange Hotel by Eimear McBride, which closed out the year on a wave of pure joy and inspiration. But if I have to make a choice I’m going to declare the book of 2020 to be a dead heat between Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry and The Spire by William Golding. Both are, of course, masterpieces.
2021 – to be remembered for a journey from Liverpool to Glasgow that kept me trapped on the train – several trains, in fact – for long enough to read the entire second half of David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet, mostly while crammed into a luggage rack between York and Edinburgh. But the top spot would still have to go to Beyond Belief by Emlyn Williams, a peerless reconstruction of the social, political and cultural landscape of the Moors Murders that should be cited in every true crime aficionado’s top twenty.
2022 – bit of a weird reading year – bit of a weird year full stop, illuminated by points of particular brightness, including Heather Clark’s magnificent landmark biography of Sylvia Plath, Red Comet, and especially Optic Nerve, by Maria Gainza, which rescued me at a moment of particular darkness.
I have today opened and named my document ‘Books 2024’.
This year started very normally but has become deeply strange. Chris has not been well. Plans have had to change suddenly. I have been caught mid-thought, at that peculiar moment of transition between one book and the next. This has happened to me before but never, I don’t think, which such violently immediate effect.
Something good has always come out of such derangement in the past, so I am keeping faith with that knowledge. In the meantime, books.
The best, the most impactful, the most personally significant book I have read so far this year has been Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. If I could hold up one book and say this is the kind of thing I want to write, the level of achievement I intend to keep before me as my perfect example, it would be this one. I think about it most days. The quality of the writing. The vision. The timelessness, which is the stuff legends are made of. A book that both transcends and suitably honours its source material.
Second comes a reread: Swimming Home, by Deborah Levy, which I read when it first came out and found slight, and vaguely annoying. This time round I got it, and it’s a masterpiece. Again, I think about it most days. Please read this wonderful article, if you haven’t already.
Third would have been The Shards, by Bret Easton Ellis, a great bollocking romper stomper of a book that helped keep me going through the earlier part of this month, the most perfectly addictive long novel I’ve read since first discovering the Stephen King doorstoppers – Salem’s Lot especially – that The Shards is at least in part a homage to. Then, like King, Ellis blows it in the final quarter. I am convinced he rolled with this thing right into the last hundred pages without properly understanding how he wanted it to end. So he stuck in a stupid knife fight. Heavy disappointment. But it’ll stick with me, I guess, and the guy can write, so.
Honourable mentions go to Julie Myerson’s brilliant The Lost Child, Rachel Cusk’s The Last Supper, Gordon Burn’s inimitable Alma Cogan, Benjamin Myers’s Cuddy and of course M. John Harrison’s Wish I Was Here, which is more than an honourable mention, it’s in its own category. So far as weird precursors go, it is the epitome.
Looking forward to the Booker longlist, as I always do. Hoping to post here more often as the year progresses.
The first book I read this year is John Darnielle’s Devil House, his third novel to date and one I had on my reading list even before 2022 got started. You may remember how much I loved his second novel, Universal Harvester, a book that continues to haunt and inspire me five years on. In some ways, you could almost imagine Devil House as the direct continuation of that book – look what happened to that video store when it started losing business! – though in fact it has no connection at all, save being the next chapter of Darnielle’s incredibly personal literary project. The way in which Darnielle uses the small town canvas to illustrate larger themes and examine important moral questions is laid almost painfully bare in Devil House. Darnielle has said in interview that his third novel took five years to write. It is easy to see why, and we should feel grateful that he allowed himself the time this book required. Devil House has a lot to say, and it says it beautifully.
“It matters which story you tell, it matters whose story you tell, it matters what people think even if it doesn’t matter to the people who needed it before the disaster hit. That’s the thing, those of us on this side of the disaster, we get so dazzled by the fireworks, by the conflagration I want to say, that we don’t see the gigantic expanse over there on the other side of the flames, but, you know. People have to live there.”
The premise of Devil House is simple and – as with Universal Harvester – it can trick you into thinking you know what’s coming. Gage Chandler is a true crime writer. His first book, The White Witch of Morro Bay, was an instant bestseller, and set him up for future successes. When his editor presents him with a new storyline and a novel approach to it, Chandler is initially sceptical – purchase an actual murder house? Go to live there? – but in the end he is unable to resist. He has personal links to the location, and location, above all, has always been intensely important to him. Also, there is a sense that this particular case has been brushed under the carpet.
The book we are reading, Chandler tells us early on, is the book he eventually came up with. It is not exactly the book he set out to write, not the book his regular fanbase might be expecting. Those who enjoy metafiction were always going to love this. Those who like straight thrillers, probably not so much. But what captivated me most about Devil House is the true subject of the book, that is, the problematical nature of true crime literature: why do we read it, should we be reading it and why do these questions matter? They are questions that have been on my mind for a while now, not least because I read and enjoy a lot of true crime literature.
The past eighteen months have taken this one stage further, though, because I have been working with a true crime narrative as part of my novel-in-progress.
It was Darnielle’s own obsession with true crime as a younger reader that kick-started Devil House – he has a lot to say about this here, and it’s a marvellous interview. I think it’s important to remember that true crime has changed and evolved a great deal since the days of the more blood-soaked, sensationalist and killer-obsessed narratives that tended to dominate the genre in the 70s and 80s when Darnielle was first consuming it. In the decades since, we have not only seen the pioneering work of writers such as Gordon Burn and David Peace, novels and creative non-fiction that takes on the subject of crime and particular criminals in a markedly different way, but more latterly the work of writers such as Sarah Weinman, Hallie Rubenhold, Nona Fernandez, Alice Bolin, Selva Almada, Rachel Monroe and Natasha Tretheway have made still further progress in revealing particular events and people more fully within the context of their social and political background.
None of which makes the stories they tell any less compelling. But they do ask us to consider why we are drawn to these narratives, a powerful and necessary question that deserves to be at the centre of any true crime story, no matter who is telling it.
Reading Devil House just as I am starting work on the second draft of what should hopefully be my next novel has been a fascinating, often startling and occasionally sobering experience as I stumble up against a deeply admired writer’s narrative responses to questions I have been asking myself. The story I happen to be working with is almost a century old; realistically speaking, anyone with a personal connection to the case must now be dead, a fact that does make some of these questions easier to deal with, though it does not make them irrelevant, especially as my treatment of the material is unorthodox. I do have other material on my hard drive, a project-in-embryo relating to a much more recent case. I am letting it lie for now, firstly because it’s still far from complete, secondly and more importantly because I don’t think it would be right to publish it yet.
The question of when it would be right is one I am still grappling with. Which is as it should be. All of this stuff comes up in Devil House, which is a huge part of why I love it.
I don’t have a particular plan for my reading in the year ahead. But I would like to steer towards books that feed, that seem to comment on, that feel in tune with my own evolving process and areas of interest. My new novel Conquest, which comes out in May, feels to me like the beginning of a new phase in my work, one I am excited about and challenged by. People have sometimes asked me if writing a book is something that gets easier with time, and there are ways in which it does, or at least it should do. You know you can go the distance, and you know you can always write more sentences about pretty much anything. But in the deeper sense, I would say no, it does not. With time comes the knowledge that writing good sentences is only the beginning. For writing to mean anything, it has to go further, into areas that might not feel comfortable, or easy. You have to make your writing count for something.
Which is terrifying, but entirely as it should be.
This weekend saw the return of the Bute Highland Games, a wonderful community occasion made all the more special this year both for the fact that it was the first time back since COVID, and that the weather actually saw fit to behave itself this time around. I took part in the 10,000-metre road race, something I have been wanting to do ever since we moved to the island and my first ever participation in any kind of sporting competition. It was tough – I’m used to running first thing in the morning when the weather conditions are always cooler – but I was enormously pleased with my finishing time of 55:55, which placed me fifth out of sixteen in my age and gender category and 21st out of 54 women over the line.
Photo by my mum!
I hesitated over whether to post about this – it has nothing to do with writing, at least not directly, and talking in public about personal issues does not always come naturally to me – but then I thought what I have to say might encourage others, and therefore be valuable.
My running means a great deal to me and brings me much joy. It kept me sane during the pandemic – the one time of day when everything felt normal was when I was outside first thing, running along the coast road whatever the weather, listening to my music and feeling especially aware of my body as a living organism. Early on in the terrible conflict in Ukraine, I read about a group of older runners in Kyiv who see their daily outing as an act of solidarity with their fellows, an insistence that they exist and remain defiant. I often think of them as I run, wonder how they are getting on. Problems and questions that have arisen with my writing flow through my mind, and are often unravelled, seemingly without effort on my part.
Above all, the weather, the landscape, the feel and smell and taste of the open air. These grounding things, these precious things – to have this sense of freedom as a daily tonic is not so much a commitment as a necessity.
The point is, when I started school it was simply assumed that because I was visually impaired I would never be able to take part in sport. It didn’t seem to matter – I was doing well academically, so no biggie, and I never expressed any particular regret or worry over this cordoned-off area of the curriculum. Any half-hearted attempts to involve me in PE ended pretty dismally. Of course they did, because most of what was on offer were team sports, ball games needing a high degree of hand-eye coordination, and one of the weird things about my sight is that I don’t have binocular vision – pretty crucial for depth perception, and judging distances at speed. (Anyone who’s ever been with me at a convention and noticed me testing the edge of an ‘alien’ step with my toe before I go down it? This is why.)
I did swim well from an early age, though, and – oddly not oddly – I was one of the few who did not react with abject horror when told we were off for a cross-country run. I always had good breath control, and what I now recognise as good core strength and stamina. None of these things were noticed, or encouraged. I am not blaming anyone – I went to school in the 1970s, they did things differently there – but nonetheless I think it’s important for me to say it, in case anyone reading this has similarly been made to believe they have no sporting aptitude, or ‘can’t’ do something because they have a disability.
From my own experience, it is not a matter of can’t; it is simply a question of discovering which sport or activity best suits your particular abilities, and your passion.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, I have always enjoyed watching sport on TV. I was heavily invested in the Hunt-Lauda rivalry in Formula 1 back in the day. I started watching and loving Wimbledon when Borg, Connors, Wade and McEnroe were all still young. I vividly remember the excitement of watching my first Olympics – Montreal, 1976: Nadia Comaneci, Lasse Viren. I watched one hell of a lot of Champions’ League football matches through the 1990s. But it wasn’t until the 2000 Olympics in Sydney that something clicked personally, for me. Watching the Romanian athlete Gabi Szabo win gold in the 5,000 metres, something about this tiny, steel-nerved blonde woman and her famous sprint finish spoke to me, inspired me, reminded me that wasn’t running something I had always wanted to try but felt was out of bounds?
I decided that there was literally no reason it should be out of bounds, and started from there, running around the block in an old pair of Adidas trainers and feeling vaguely embarrassed. The embarrassment stopped after about a fortnight, as I began to build up my staying power. I have run in fits and starts ever since, though it did not become a daily habit until we moved to the island. With a course that is safe and free of traffic and has start-to-finish views of the Firth of Clyde, how could it not?
I spend many hours of every day sitting at my desk. The practice of writing calls for stamina of a different kind – the ability to sit with an idea until it becomes something, to keep faith with my work even when it feels flat, or disorganised, or beyond my control. It can be mentally exhausting and occasionally dispiriting. To be able to get outside, to let my mind unclench itself – I can honestly say that taking up running has benefited every aspect of my life, both my physical and mental wellbeing. It offers a rest from the intensity of writing, as well as a spur to it.
Running is my hobby, the thing I do for myself alone and with no other aim in view than to enjoy the experience. I’m not at all competitive about it, and that is part of the joy. But can I beat my own time next year? If I weren’t already wondering about that, I wouldn’t be me.
