Fiction. First published in 1989, this long-neglected cult classic features revisions, and a new afterword, by the author.
"A novel as mysterious, beautiful, sad and frightening as contemporary American childhood itself—and, fortunately, a good deal funnier. Bradfield's California is haunted by vast primordial Lovecraftian forces—death, sex, credit cards, Mom—which threaten always to emerge from their ancient hiding places and engulf the world and the narrator, eight-year old Phillip and his preteen Karamazov friends. Those who think they know all about California and Oedipal drives will here discover the true extent of their ignorance. The thing is indescribable—violent, hallucinatory, comic and incredibly well written. Scott Bradfield has not simply staked out new literary terrain here, he has mapped and colonized an entire new plant."—Michael Chabon
"If you spot it, grab it."—J.G. Ballard
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
Phillip is eight years old. He experiences material reality as a hindrance, so he tries to stay in an inner realm composed only of abstract concepts like gravity, motion, sound and light. He lives with Mom, who stays alone in her bedroom. Once he killed a man with gleaming tools from a hardware store. He has a friend with whom he does burglary and drugs and seances. Then Dad comes to stay, and Phillip descends to a subterranean otherworld where he makes contact with "dead black things, obloid and featureless, like faintly disembodied laundry hampers." A sad, beautiful book.
About the Author:
Born in California in 1955, Scott Bradfield has lived in London for thirty years. He is the author of THE HISTORY OF LUMINOUS MOTION (Calamari Press, 2013).
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherCalamari Press
- Publication date2013
- ISBN 10 0983163324
- ISBN 13 9780983163329
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages156
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Rating