Travel Arrangements Book

Having previously published eight novels and three collections of stories, M. John Harrison's latest collection, Travel Arrangements, confirms the abilities of a writer of singular subtlety and intelligence; that he is not more celebrated may in part be due to the tendency of writers to be categorised by genre. The author's previous books have often been labelled as science-fiction or fantasy but the stories gathered here demonstrate the limitations of such categories. Harrison's writing balances disquietingly on the edge of realism and careful descriptions of quotidian life and place, shifting into intimations of worlds of feeling and states of mind briefly glimpsed. Most striking is his ability to unnerve and disturb with the most economical of means, without need for overt passages of terror or excess. If there is the sensibility of genre here, it is that of the everyday observed by an eye accustomed to strangeness--the science-fiction world applied to the dark terrains of sexuality, desire, travel and one's own neighbourhood. A woman executing her brother's will, anatomies of brief relationships, a detective in search of a serial killer, a young man who uses the Tarot to determine and direct random journeys--all hint at the unfathomable complexity of the world in which we live. However, this capacity for observation is not without humour, for in the story "Black Houses" we get a description of the narrator's neighbours--landed gentry fallen on hard times: Lord Arquiss was 77. He kept a Volvo the colour of a cheap brogue, and a 50-year-old ex-ballerina who claimed to be his wife. From the disaster they had salvaged an amazing 3rd Reich-style bed, the elongated black wooden posts of which were capped with vast polished eagles like lecterns. Every night you could see the two of them sitting up in this thing like two bull terriers in a pram. Highly praised by writers such as Iain Banks and the late Angela Carter, M. John Harrison's elegant, uneasy fictions deserve our attention. --Burhan TufailRead More