The most arresting book I have read in recent months is Lara Pawson’s unclassifiable non-fiction, Spent Light. I’m not sure I could explain what it’s about and it’s better to arrive without preconceptions, anyway. But among its themes are the coexistence in our world of domesticity, sex, and unendurable violence.
It’s a rare book whose prose elicits slasher-movie jump-scares. Spent Light does it with descriptions of household objects: an electric toaster, a toilet, a wooden broom. The narrator speaks to a second person, “you,” complicit throughout. The book made me wonder whether, as I turned the final page, I would discover that I was already dead.
No thanks, Kieran. Sounds artful but too close to horror, a genre I gave up in adolescence. There’s so much real horror in the world today, I’m looking for reading that doesn’t amplify it. I don’t need to wonder if I’m already dead. But maybe a longer review would change my mind.
I liked the book but my reading was influenced by reading her previous book
www.discontinuednotes.com/2024/01/24/shudder-to-think/