Tuesday 8 February 2022

Number 8 - The Eyes of the Carp - T.M. Wright

Another very weird book.  And again, completely intentional on the part of the writer.

T.M. Wright has a very distinctive style. He wrote fractured narratives more skillfully than nearly any other writer I can think of.

This book is no exception.  

Kevin, the narrator doesn't stick to the subject at hand for long.  He jumps back and forward in time.  The diary style date headings cease making sense very rapidly, and once they're replaced by increasing and decreasing levels of pi it just becomes surreal.

Surreal is probably the single best word to describe this book.  Kevin is not the world's most reliable narrator.  The fractured nature of the storytelling gives us a picture of how broken his mind is.

The story follows Kevin and his wife after they move into a strange house in the middle of nowhere.  Weirdness ensues, but seems to be more from the narrator than the surroundings.

Once again with a TM Wright book, I have to say that I only had a vague idea what was going on, although the ending was probably 75% clear. However I loved the journey to get to whatever that destination was.  It was creepy and strange and disturbing in a way I find it difficult to pin down. 

We are seeing the world through Kevin's eyes and it's not a nice place.  Kevin is not a nice man. There are several instances of way too much information. It's a good literary impression of what living with a serious mental illness might feel like.

It's very short and an easy, if confuzzling, read. 

I got lucky and found a cheap-ish copy on Ebay which I snatched up.  This tends to sell for silly prices online.  If I'd paid the regular price for this I might have been less pleased with it. But since I found it for reasonable second hand rates, especially considering it's a signed limited edition (number 19 of 750) I can't complain.

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