BOOK REC’: For those, like me, who read Islington Crocodiles many years ago and have been waiting for Paul Meloy‘s first novel, well, the wait is almost over as The Night Clock is published in about eight weeks. I’ve been lucky enough to read the manuscript and thought . . .
“To write in such detail about life’s potential for awfulness, and some of the awful people in it – all of the frustration, pettiness, unfairness, injustice, wretchedness, and tragedy – while constantly b…ringing the reader close to a mad, ecstatic, life affirming laugh, is a rare skill. So how do you entwine humour and tragedy without one detracting from the other? Ask Paul Meloy, because he’s done it in The Night Clock.
“To write in such detail about life’s potential for awfulness, and some of the awful people in it – all of the frustration, pettiness, unfairness, injustice, wretchedness, and tragedy – while constantly b…ringing the reader close to a mad, ecstatic, life affirming laugh, is a rare skill. So how do you entwine humour and tragedy without one detracting from the other? Ask Paul Meloy, because he’s done it in The Night Clock.
There is so much to admire about The Night Clock – the poetry that seems to map the subconscious, the ideas, the forensic insight into everything from our foibles to the outright tragedy of being human. I love the way Paul Meloy sees the world and writes about it.”
