Book 45 - Sam Thompson "Communion Town"
Aug. 15th, 2021 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveSam Thompson "Communion Town" (Fourth Estate)
Sam Thompson’s debut novel, Communion Town, was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2012. It consists of ten tales, mostly unrelated, and not all equally enjoyable. The town, itself is a nightmarish place where the vast majority of its inhabitants lead sad and desperate lives in dingy apartments and the nights are populated by creepers, serial killers, and other things that bump up against you in the middle of the night and whisper the worst kind of horror into your ear.
Each of the ten stories is told by a different narrator in a different voice and genre, everything from the creepy narrator in the opening tale who seems to be stalking a young woman, to the hard-boiled ‘40s era detective in Gallathea, to the worker in an Abattoir who is convinced that his boss is a serial killer known as Le Flaneur who is terrorizing the city.
Communion Town offers little in the way of community for its inhabitants. Many of the characters have come to the city seeking a better life like the young musician in The Song of Serelight only to have their dreams completely shattered by the town. Death and disappointment seem to be the only things able to survive well in Communion Town.
The stories are supposed to be linked but, with the exception of a couple of the tales (notably about the Abattoir), the link seems to be mainly in their almost unrelenting darkness. Although, at times, the stories seemed overly clever (as in, for example, Le Flaneur has one heck of a literary pedigree which I only learned because my rusty high school French wasn’t up to a translation and I had to look it up) and not all of the tales were equally well-drawn. However, author Sam Thompson’s prose is absolutely stunning and his ability to create a completely chilling atmosphere is outstanding. This is the kind of book which requires more than one read and perhaps a handy Norton's Anthology of Literature to be fully appreciated but it is well worth the effort.
Sam Thompson’s debut novel, Communion Town, was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2012. It consists of ten tales, mostly unrelated, and not all equally enjoyable. The town, itself is a nightmarish place where the vast majority of its inhabitants lead sad and desperate lives in dingy apartments and the nights are populated by creepers, serial killers, and other things that bump up against you in the middle of the night and whisper the worst kind of horror into your ear.
Each of the ten stories is told by a different narrator in a different voice and genre, everything from the creepy narrator in the opening tale who seems to be stalking a young woman, to the hard-boiled ‘40s era detective in Gallathea, to the worker in an Abattoir who is convinced that his boss is a serial killer known as Le Flaneur who is terrorizing the city.
Communion Town offers little in the way of community for its inhabitants. Many of the characters have come to the city seeking a better life like the young musician in The Song of Serelight only to have their dreams completely shattered by the town. Death and disappointment seem to be the only things able to survive well in Communion Town.
The stories are supposed to be linked but, with the exception of a couple of the tales (notably about the Abattoir), the link seems to be mainly in their almost unrelenting darkness. Although, at times, the stories seemed overly clever (as in, for example, Le Flaneur has one heck of a literary pedigree which I only learned because my rusty high school French wasn’t up to a translation and I had to look it up) and not all of the tales were equally well-drawn. However, author Sam Thompson’s prose is absolutely stunning and his ability to create a completely chilling atmosphere is outstanding. This is the kind of book which requires more than one read and perhaps a handy Norton's Anthology of Literature to be fully appreciated but it is well worth the effort.
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