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Well - as if powering one book out into the world wasn't exhausting enough, this time Eibonvale Press (That is, me) has produced a double launch - and two seriously impressive books they are too. Both of these were an absolute joy to work with. Both of these sum up, present and critique the City and Modern Life in their own ways - and both present British surrealism and slipstream at its best, though in very contrasting styles.
Douglas Thompson's Ultrameta is a haunting and passionate work - very intense and genuine. What is Ultrameta? Visionary horror? Experimental surrealism? Trippy
outsider art? Like Danielewski’s House of Leaves, this is one of those
few books that possess a core of something genuinely unusual, both in
its ideas and its approach to storytelling. A tale of ‘Serial Suicide’
– or perhaps of immortality. A circular novel – or is it a story
collection? A four-dimensional shadow of, or an enigma modelled on,
Life itself?
Ultrameta is the metropolis of all metropolises. The city we all live
in, wherever we happen to be in the world. London, Glasgow, Athens, New
York, Tokyo . . . the ‘City of the Soul’ that has grown within all of
us. The time-span of the text ranges from Ancient Greece to the
unnervingly familiar present, leading us to uncomfortable questions
about ourselves and the life we live. It encompasses a vast emotional
and social spectrum, which we plunge through as we follow the main
character, Alexander Stark, through a vivid range of different
identities, moving from one time and place to another in a seemingly
endless cycle of death and re-emergence.
Allen Ashley's Once and Future Cities on the other hand is a lively collection of stories, filled with energy and a spectaculally british brash and worldweary tone. These tales of Urban Fantasy are intensely surreal, savagely satirical, subtly subversive and despairingly funny. They expose the absurdities of modern British society like no other writer. Every waking moment is a struggle for continued sanity and survival as we muddle thoughtlessly through this surrealist joke called civilisation. The challenges – factual, fictitious, mythical, eminently plausible – just keep on coming. Ashley demonstrates that, if you have the nose for it, apocalypse can be smelled everywhere – in the latest media circus; in the latest dubious laws or government measures; in celebrity culture or the surveillance state; in the mindsets and prejudices of the population and in the tiniest actions we all perform.
Both these books will be receiving a full launch event, hosted by Waterstones, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, UK on the 1st October, 6.30PM. So anyone and everyone is welcome to join us there for wine, readings and signings.
Click Here to see more about the books: http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk
2:17 PM
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