His entry begins:I've just finished The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark. My ex-wife had some run-ins with Dame Muriel: now there, she once told me, was a woman who could make a typist cry.About The Smoke, from the publisher:
Towards the end of her life Muriel gave huge grief to her agent because her books weren't thick enough to compete, spine-wise, with the books they were shelved next to. (My new, slim Penguin edition of the Ballad uses exquisitely thin paper: some former typist's revenge, perhaps?)
Dougal Douglas (or is it Douglas Dougal?), an "arts man" consulting for a textiles firm, is taking the moral temperature of Peckham in South London. He advances this research by chatting up girls, provoking fights, and...[read on]
Simon Ings’ THE SMOKE is about love, loss and loneliness in an incomprehensible world.Visit Simon Ings's website.
Humanity has been split into three different species. Mutual incomprehension has fractured the globe. As humans race to bethe first of their kind to reach the stars, another Great War looms.
For you, that means returning to Yorkshire and the town of your birth, where factories churn out the parts for gigantic spaceships. You’re done with the pretentions of the capital and its unfathomable architecture. You’re done with the people of the Bund, their easy superiority and unstoppable spread throughout the city of London and beyond. You’re done with Georgy Chernoy and his questionable defeat of death. You’re done with his daughter, Fel, and losing all the time. You’re done with love.
But soon enough you will find yourself in the Smoke again, drawn back to the life you thought you’d left behind.
You’re done with love. But love’s not done with you.
The Page 69 Test: The Smoke.
My Book, The Movie: The Smoke.
Writers Read: Simon Ings.
--Marshal Zeringue
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