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Oblivious
"A sweeping vista of Northern sky opens up between the warehouses and hangs motionless above the cobbled streets." "We're oblivious. And all around us, Christmas hits the city like a plague." The influence of Raymond Carver hangs over Oblivious, an atmospheric collection of short stories that brush against the lives of characters who populate the working towns of North West England. A young couple try to deal with an affair, a family struggles with racial persecution, a new father tries to forget his past but is drawn back in despite himself. In 'The Third Circle' a grieving parent tries to escape the death of his daughter, but surfacing even briefly from the twilight of his numb existence overwhelms him. In 'Brand Awareness' a redundant office worker wonders how his life ended in mediocrity. These are the lives of the people all around us, haunted by things beyond their control, but with glimmers of hope and retribution.
170 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 2010
27 people want to read
About the author
Neil Schiller
5 books11 followersNeil Schiller is an IT consultant and part time academic from Liverpool. Previously, he has published critical work on the authors Charles Bukowski and Richard Brautigan.
His first work of fiction, Oblivious, a collection of 21 short stories about life in the North West of England, was released in November 2010. The Haiku Diary – the result of a project where a diary was kept in Haiku form for each day of 2008 – followed in December.
(Slight Return), a collection of 20 short stories about the effect music has on ordinary lives, was released in September 2017.
His first work of fiction, Oblivious, a collection of 21 short stories about life in the North West of England, was released in November 2010. The Haiku Diary – the result of a project where a diary was kept in Haiku form for each day of 2008 – followed in December.
(Slight Return), a collection of 20 short stories about the effect music has on ordinary lives, was released in September 2017.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 19, 2011
This is a wonderful collection of short stories. I enjoyed the sparse prose, the evocative description, and the fact that although the stories are all about different people, male and female, they could almost merge into one. All the main characters are struggling in some way. The themes of difficult family relationships, addiction, regret, depression, guilt, repeat themselves over and over. Schiller has created real characters; these could be people you pass in the street. Schiller has stripped away the layers that ordinary people use to hide their true circumstances or feelings, and gone beneath to examine and reveal the underbelly of human nature. We are taken right inside the characters’ homes, hearts, and minds. Schiller has mastered the art of short story and likes to show off about it too. He has included a one sentence story, ‘Trapped’, and a half a page story, ‘Half’--both of which are perfect--and the latter is one of my favourites in the collection.
The descriptive prose is fresh and original. An example of his writing, from, ‘Brand Awareness’, a story about a man facing redundancy: “I’ve squandered six years of my life on this job. More if you count the myriad of spoiled hopes it pulled into the swirling vortex of its black heart. I’ve commuted over twelve thousand miles; I’ve missed my daughter’s first steps, first words, first school play; I’ve worked and slept and stressed myself into an isolation around which my wife has built a new life to compensate. And it was all for nothing.”
And from, ‘Sabotage’, about a man estranged from his young son. “In the midst of the other families, in the kinetic frenzy and shrill excitement of the afternoon, we are silent and desperate and miserable. A dark stain on the gaiety of life. Two broken pilings of rock in a glinting sea of youthful energy.”
There is much more where that came from in this fabulous collection.
This is a book that will give you a fly on the wall look at ordinary lives and the common scars and ties that bind us. It will reveal to you the hidden side of life, the side most people will never reveal, and of which we are usually oblivious.
Highly recommended.
Reviewed by Maria Savva as a reviewer for Bookpleasures.com.
The descriptive prose is fresh and original. An example of his writing, from, ‘Brand Awareness’, a story about a man facing redundancy: “I’ve squandered six years of my life on this job. More if you count the myriad of spoiled hopes it pulled into the swirling vortex of its black heart. I’ve commuted over twelve thousand miles; I’ve missed my daughter’s first steps, first words, first school play; I’ve worked and slept and stressed myself into an isolation around which my wife has built a new life to compensate. And it was all for nothing.”
And from, ‘Sabotage’, about a man estranged from his young son. “In the midst of the other families, in the kinetic frenzy and shrill excitement of the afternoon, we are silent and desperate and miserable. A dark stain on the gaiety of life. Two broken pilings of rock in a glinting sea of youthful energy.”
There is much more where that came from in this fabulous collection.
This is a book that will give you a fly on the wall look at ordinary lives and the common scars and ties that bind us. It will reveal to you the hidden side of life, the side most people will never reveal, and of which we are usually oblivious.
Highly recommended.
Reviewed by Maria Savva as a reviewer for Bookpleasures.com.
May 10, 2011
When I started Oblivious I didn’t know what to expect. I’d met Neil Schiller online and we exchanged books, promising to read and review each other's work. But when I began reading Oblivious I was put off. The book was bleak, dismal. It’s characters were simmering in a stew of doomed sexual passion; they were buried in meaningless work; it was always raining, or about to rain; his characters said things I thought, but would never say --
I didn’t really like the book. But I couldn’t stop reading it.
About halfway through I flashed on the first ten pages of No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. I’d re-read McCarthy’s opening pages three or four times because I couldn’t believe he’d achieved so much power in his description (a desert landscape with impending mayhem) in so few words. I felt like I was watching a magician do a trick right in front of me -- and I was making him do it over and over again.
I realized I was getting the same feeling from Schiller’s prose. Neil Schiller bares his characters’ souls giving the reader sparse, powerful, unflinching views into their darkest moments. And mayhem is always lurking just below, threatening to explode.
It’s not easy to read. Try this:
“This is how we live. There are two sides to the equation of our lives and I can’t figure out the variable that keeps changing. At any point the end product is risotto, or sex, or self harm. And when she damages herself, she usually takes a portion of the house with her. My antique clock, my grandfather’s clock, sits awkwardly in its nook in the hallway. Its hands are broken off and it snatches glances at me through its shattered glass dome like a wounded animal I don’t have the nerve to finish off. It paid the price for a strained pleasantry. My wife mixed up a sentence while Ethan was grabbing his coat. She watched from the end of the driveway. I smiled and a century of time stopped forever.
‘She’s stalking me. That fucking bitch is stalking me.’ ”
Or this:
“There are icicle lights hanging from the front of the house from last Christmas.
‘Your father’s still at work.’
My father is eight feet down beneath a simple stone plinth and a solid tombstone sky. Peter is out at work. We’ve all passed thirty and she still insists we call him dad.”
I could have picked almost any paragraph. This is powerful writing. We all go through it at some point, we all feel it. Anger. Rage. Despair. We question, "What am I doing?" "How did I get here?" "What do I do now?" The mirror doesn’t have a lot to say.
Neil Schiller went through it and he took notes. Oblivious is a collection worth reading. Neil Schiller is name worth remembering. Good stuff.
I didn’t really like the book. But I couldn’t stop reading it.
About halfway through I flashed on the first ten pages of No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. I’d re-read McCarthy’s opening pages three or four times because I couldn’t believe he’d achieved so much power in his description (a desert landscape with impending mayhem) in so few words. I felt like I was watching a magician do a trick right in front of me -- and I was making him do it over and over again.
I realized I was getting the same feeling from Schiller’s prose. Neil Schiller bares his characters’ souls giving the reader sparse, powerful, unflinching views into their darkest moments. And mayhem is always lurking just below, threatening to explode.
It’s not easy to read. Try this:
“This is how we live. There are two sides to the equation of our lives and I can’t figure out the variable that keeps changing. At any point the end product is risotto, or sex, or self harm. And when she damages herself, she usually takes a portion of the house with her. My antique clock, my grandfather’s clock, sits awkwardly in its nook in the hallway. Its hands are broken off and it snatches glances at me through its shattered glass dome like a wounded animal I don’t have the nerve to finish off. It paid the price for a strained pleasantry. My wife mixed up a sentence while Ethan was grabbing his coat. She watched from the end of the driveway. I smiled and a century of time stopped forever.
‘She’s stalking me. That fucking bitch is stalking me.’ ”
Or this:
“There are icicle lights hanging from the front of the house from last Christmas.
‘Your father’s still at work.’
My father is eight feet down beneath a simple stone plinth and a solid tombstone sky. Peter is out at work. We’ve all passed thirty and she still insists we call him dad.”
I could have picked almost any paragraph. This is powerful writing. We all go through it at some point, we all feel it. Anger. Rage. Despair. We question, "What am I doing?" "How did I get here?" "What do I do now?" The mirror doesn’t have a lot to say.
Neil Schiller went through it and he took notes. Oblivious is a collection worth reading. Neil Schiller is name worth remembering. Good stuff.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews