Dwelling

Trilogy #1

by Richard Makin

Dwelling, like many a 19th-century three-decker, started life as a serial publication - online, under a working title. Now it has emerged in print, this immense work, without recognizable characters or plot, can be seen to offer a radical and contemporary take on the function of the novel in history: giving a fractured panorama of the conditions of living now.

672 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Richard Makin is a writer, poet and artist currently living on the south coast of England.

Reviews

[Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary book, by a writer who is pretty nearly unknown from what I can see, although Iain Sinclair quotes him at the beginning of Lights Out for the Territory (which was what put me on his trail). Makin is more interesting as a writer than Sinclair, far more of a textualist. Apart from Ann Quin, who is getting a lot of media attention at the moment (after being first heralded then long ignored) it is hard to know which other British writers to compare him too. Extremely "poetic" writing, but hard-edged, druidic cut-up, surrealist collage, metaphysical noir. Mesmeric, in a word.