Head Injuries
by Conrad Williams
David has been summoned to Morecambe, a place he hoped
he'd never see again.
It's winter and the English seaside town is dead. David
knows exactly how it feels. Empty for as long as he can remember, he depends too
much on a past filled with the excitements of drink, drugs and cold sex. The
friends that sustained him then-Helen and Seamus-are here now and together they
aim to pinpoint the source of the violence that has suddenly exploded into their
lives.
The friends drive each other further into a territory of
fear, suspicion and threat as old bitternesses are rekindled, ancient haunts are
revisited.
The phantoms of the past are coalescing and something is
coming home to roost…
***
From Kirkus Reviews
A debut novel that progresses like crisscross dreams in a
damaged head, by a young Englishman whose work has appeared largely in horror
and fantasy anthologies. Narrator David Munro, a second-rate painter, has not
seen his college roomie Seamus 'Shay' Cope since he threw a teacup at him three
years ago. But now their shared companion, Helen Soper, has called David to the
English seaside town of Morecambe to help revive the unlovable Seamus, who's now
suffering some mystery malaise that affects Helen as wellsomething shapeless and
ugly that is unfolding and that David has begun to feel as well. It's winter and
something cryptic is exploding within them. Odd figures spur childhood memories;
as in a dream, a strange woman in a car slowly parts the skin of David's cheek
with her fingernail. Memories filter back: Had Seamus and their schoolmate Dando
tried to drown a dog, then tie up David, nearly drown him in mud, and start to
bugger him? Seamus tells David about a caving tragedy in New Mexico when his
fellow caver got stuck and died of cold which reminds David of Seamus nearly
drowning him in mud. Bad karma comes twisting around David in the form of a
murdered girl. Did MacCreadle, a horrible figure from their childhood, do it?
Helen explains to David that they're being stalked. But by whom? The three
friends slowly form their own vocabulary to describe the events befalling them.
And so they stumble vaguely on, David and Seamus with dreams of suffocation.
It's as if, Seamus says, we've opened up our heads and nailed them together so
that we're all sharing the same Widescreen movie. By novel's end, their worst
secrets have fountained upward in a collective dawning and bloodletting. The
spine of this waking nightmare is a sad, gasping loneliness, into which any bad
thought can fall and spear you. The family love that at last fills this vacancy
is quite moving.
***
'I loved it. His portraits of everyday loneliness are
brilliant. Altogether I thought it one of the finest and most haunting modern
spectral novels I've read.'
-Ramsey Campbell
'Conrad Williams is a demon-Spirit, weaving beautiful
nests of tight prose, hatching spectacular nightmares out of love, guilt,
remorse and unreliable memory. The flights of his fiction are dazzling and
dangerous.'
-Graham Joyce
he'd never see again.
It's winter and the English seaside town is dead. David
knows exactly how it feels. Empty for as long as he can remember, he depends too
much on a past filled with the excitements of drink, drugs and cold sex. The
friends that sustained him then-Helen and Seamus-are here now and together they
aim to pinpoint the source of the violence that has suddenly exploded into their
lives.
The friends drive each other further into a territory of
fear, suspicion and threat as old bitternesses are rekindled, ancient haunts are
revisited.
The phantoms of the past are coalescing and something is
coming home to roost…
***
From Kirkus Reviews
A debut novel that progresses like crisscross dreams in a
damaged head, by a young Englishman whose work has appeared largely in horror
and fantasy anthologies. Narrator David Munro, a second-rate painter, has not
seen his college roomie Seamus 'Shay' Cope since he threw a teacup at him three
years ago. But now their shared companion, Helen Soper, has called David to the
English seaside town of Morecambe to help revive the unlovable Seamus, who's now
suffering some mystery malaise that affects Helen as wellsomething shapeless and
ugly that is unfolding and that David has begun to feel as well. It's winter and
something cryptic is exploding within them. Odd figures spur childhood memories;
as in a dream, a strange woman in a car slowly parts the skin of David's cheek
with her fingernail. Memories filter back: Had Seamus and their schoolmate Dando
tried to drown a dog, then tie up David, nearly drown him in mud, and start to
bugger him? Seamus tells David about a caving tragedy in New Mexico when his
fellow caver got stuck and died of cold which reminds David of Seamus nearly
drowning him in mud. Bad karma comes twisting around David in the form of a
murdered girl. Did MacCreadle, a horrible figure from their childhood, do it?
Helen explains to David that they're being stalked. But by whom? The three
friends slowly form their own vocabulary to describe the events befalling them.
And so they stumble vaguely on, David and Seamus with dreams of suffocation.
It's as if, Seamus says, we've opened up our heads and nailed them together so
that we're all sharing the same Widescreen movie. By novel's end, their worst
secrets have fountained upward in a collective dawning and bloodletting. The
spine of this waking nightmare is a sad, gasping loneliness, into which any bad
thought can fall and spear you. The family love that at last fills this vacancy
is quite moving.
***
'I loved it. His portraits of everyday loneliness are
brilliant. Altogether I thought it one of the finest and most haunting modern
spectral novels I've read.'
-Ramsey Campbell
'Conrad Williams is a demon-Spirit, weaving beautiful
nests of tight prose, hatching spectacular nightmares out of love, guilt,
remorse and unreliable memory. The flights of his fiction are dazzling and
dangerous.'
-Graham Joyce