Wednesday, 29 December 2021

Camp Fear by Tom Bland

Buy it from Abe Books  


This collection is violent, and uncomfortably sexualised, and yet the intensity of the human connection is the strongest thing you are hit with, and the shock value of some of the actions actually fade against that context.


It feels like it is only a marginally exaggerated version of real events, perhaps we live in an age where “fact” will almost always outpace fiction to the extremes.


But there is tenderness of a sort, for example

“The flat felt more empty

than usual as

Sophie hadn’t been home in three days.

Her food was

still in the fridge and her clothes were in her wardrobe.


To be so alone in a place she had

shaped; her presence was hovering over

the many objects she had brought

from charity shops...”


The power of presence and absence is a familiar experience to anyone that has shared a home would someone not departed.

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