Communion Town: A City in Ten Chapters

by Sam Thompson

The Man Booker longlisted Communion Town reveals the shadows and sinister inhabitants of a city that never appears the same way twice.

On crowded streets, in the town squares and half-empty tower blocks, the lonely and lost try to make a connection. A weary gumshoe pounds the reeking sidewalks, seeking someone he knows he will never find. Violence loiters in blind alleys, eager to embrace the unsuspecting and the reckless. Lovers are doomed to follow treacherous paths that were laid long before they first met.

This city is no ordinary place. Here, the underworld has surfaced; dreams melt into reality and memories are imagined before they are lived. Ghosts and monsters, refugees and travellers – the voices of Communion Town clamour to tell the stories of the city, stories that must be heard to be believed.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Literary Fiction, Fantasy, Ebooks, Science Fiction, Contemporary

278 pages, Paperback

First published July 5, 2012

About the author

Sam Thompson was born in London in 1978.

His first book Communion Town, which is about a kaleidoscopic city, was published in 2012 and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His second book Jott is about friendship, madness and modernism. It came out in 2018.

He’s written for the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books and other periodicals, and has taught English lit and creative writing at Oxford University, Oxford Brookes and Queen’s University Belfast.

He lives in Belfast.

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pandemic rereads #5

All roads lead to Communion Town.

Back in 2012, I still considered 'longlisted for the Booker Prize' to be a major stamp of quality, and I'm glad I did, as otherwise I might never have read Sam Thompson's debut. Communion Town was, then, something entirely new to me, and it acted as a gateway drug to a whole world of literary speculative and slipstream fiction. It did a huge amount to help me understand exactly what I wanted out of stories that used elements of fantasy or horror.

Even though I'd always remembered it being great, rereading Communion Town left me surprised at exactly how large its influence has loomed on my tastes. Its unspecific, simmering strangeness, and the sense that it's somewhere between a novel and a short story collection, are preferences that would eventually come to fruition when I discovered the work of my favourite author, Nina Allan. My favourite ever podcast feels like it exists in the same world as this book. When I have written my own stories, I have taken so much inspiration from Communion Town without properly realising it. In many, many ways, I've been trying to recreate how this book made me feel ever since I first read it.

I think 'Outside the Days' is still my favourite chapter. It proves that 14 pages is more than enough to create a deeply involving character study. I also love 'The Song of Serelight Fair', despite disliking its narrator; its tale of music and mistrust is more fully realised than many novels. 'The City Room' is a seemingly innocuous scene that may be the key to something much bigger. 'Gallathea' is stunningly detailed and dark, with a wonderful epilogue. 'Good Slaughter' is darker still, a wander through poorly lit alleyways where the heavy rain isn't enough to wash away the blood. 'The Rose Tree' takes you into the heart of the city and its myths. And through it all, the persistent details – the smudged-out faces of the 'monsters', the shifting presence of the 'flâneur', the amorphous nature of the nameless city itself – weave the ten stories into a marvellous, uncanny whole. Time is strange in certain rooms...

This is without doubt one of the best books I have ever read. It's just a perfect piece of art. If you missed it at the time, I urge you to read it now.

TinyLetter

---
Original review (August 2012)

Subtitled A City in Ten Chapters, Sam Thompson's debut is a collection of ten short stories: all are set in the same unnamed city, and all have loose connections with the others. The city itself remains an enigma, though its many districts have colourful, slightly offbeat and evocative names - Sludd's Liberty, Glory Part, Low Glinder. The narrative style varies enormously, from the cool, detached tone typical of literary fiction, present in (my favourite) 'Outside the Days', which recalls the best bits of Great House by Nicole Krauss, to the noirish romp of 'Gallathea' and 'The Significant City of Lazarus Glass', which is a bit like a dark spoof of an Agatha Christie mystery. The many narrators and their vastly different experiences in different locales of the city create a patchwork effect, as if you are studying something huge from a number of different angles, while the whole remains too vast to perceive. The experience of reading Communion Town is much like that of exploring an unfamiliar city on foot - both disorientating and seductive, and full of sharp turns with the occasional dead end.

There is an element of something strange and supernatural to almost all of the stories, giving the book as a whole an unmistakable air of fantasy. This much I expected from the fact that it has won plaudits from the likes of China Miéville. However, this is not actually a fantasy novel: rather, each of the stories has a touch of something weird and inexplicable, with the most prominent example being the 'monsters' that stalk the city at night, which are never quite described or explained properly. Most of the interactions that take place within the stories are recognisable, even mundane, and easy for anyone to relate to, but their surroundings and circumstances are not. I won't pretend I understood everything that was going on in the stories or precisely how they were all linked, and this may be frustrating for some readers, but for me it just deepened the intrigue.

Communion Town is one of those books I want to go back and re-read straight away. I miss being immersed in its world, and I wish there had been ten, twenty more stories about the city. I want to pick apart the layers and puzzle out the connections, figure out who each character was to each of the others. I borrowed my copy from the library and held onto it for weeks after I'd finished reading, because I just didn't want to let it go: I found that there was something weirdly comforting about this strange, beguiling, nameless city. It's a place I want to escape back to and, in fact, I can't stop thinking about it. I can't think of a better reason for a five-star review than that.

[Maya Panika · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly, almost painfully, literary series of stories; some I enjoyed very much, some not so much, some not at all. All are written in an absorbing, poetic style, with a literary brilliance that blankets rather than shines. Communion Town abounds with strange and original metaphor; it feels experimental, and a little too self-consciously clever.

What is it about? Is it about anything, really? I thought I was catching clues, like the clever use of grammar: `Time is strange in certain rooms.' Then, `Time is strange. In certain rooms...' But if these were pointers to an overall theme, I missed it.

I wish it had been better constructed, if the stories had been linked by even tenuous threads - just one character running through would have rounded it out and given more weight, more meat.

The writing is gorgeous but it's a little like tinsel without the tree; it needs more flesh on its bones, but it's still worth 4 stars.

[Maciek · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read this because it was nominated for the Booker prize, and I was intrigued by its interesting structure. I'm a fan of short stories but these have no place on the Booker list, as its focused entirely on novels, so I expected Communion Town to be a series of stories linked by characters, events and the ubiqutos place - after all, it is subtitled a City in Ten Chapters.

Have you noticed how each of us conjures up our own city? asks the book's opening title story of Ulya and Nicolas, a pair of fresh immigrants to the metropolis, who have just began to discover it - exactly like us, readers. Other stories feature protagonists who are more familiar with the city - a private detective, a slaughterhouse worker and a murdered who is described as Baudelaire's Flaneur, and a rickshaw driver who discovers his talent for the guitar.

Unfortunately, most of these pieces look more like the author's experiments with various genres and techniques, and are more of a deliberate pastiche than actual, engaging stories. There is one gem here - the second story, The Song of Serelight Fair, which is the tale of a poor rickshaw boy who falls in love with a rich female passenger. She buys guitar for him, and he discovers that he has a talent for songwriting, and begins to perform and play, only to discover that he's not the one pulling the strings. It was engaging and I wanted to read more of it - which unfortunately I can't say about the rest of Communion Town, which blurred into one another in my memory.

The Booker judges made a good decision by pulling it out of the list - I'd borrow it from a library rather than blindly buy a copy.

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

I set myself a challenge on my vacation. It was to read the Man Booker Long list, or as much of it as I could. I didn't know anything about the books, so I was approaching them without any inkling of the stories or the authors.

And I started with Communion Town.

I wish I hadn't.

I struggled to get through it and was bored by the characters in the shorts. Not liking or identifying with a character in a short story is fine, because you only live with them for a few pages. When you live with the same vaguely changed characters for several shorts, you get bored as they don't really move or change.

I knew from the title pages it was meant to be ten short stories from the same city, but instead these were ten short tortuously written beginning plot-lines of full length novels that were never fleshed out. To collect them under the guise of the same city meant to occasionally refer to something that happened in a different short story, but no real city structure or timeline. Most of the shorts, to me, had no real ending and just stopped where it felt the author got stuck and went to the next one.

Some stories are more successful than others in the book, which makes the less well done chapters stand out as being poor.

I finished the book and am more than willing to acknowledge when a book is well written but not my cup of tea. I strongly feel this was none of the above. Its definitely not my cup of tea, but well written could be argued.

To be more blunt: You know that guy in your writing class who was so intense about his art and anyone who gave him notes just didn't get it, man.?

This book is that guy. If a book could wear a beret, this one would be.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

this novel was quite dark and didn't realise at the start it was a series of short stories based around this city, some of the stories were good others not so

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is on the 2012 Booker longlist, and is not described as short stories; it seems to be ten different narratives in the same fictional city. This city has such a strong effect on people that it becomes its own character. There is a drawing accompanying each section that comes from part of the title page, and appears to be a segment of the city.

There are unknown creatures (maybe monsters?) in at least one story, unnamed narrators, and the city morphs between feeling Soviet to English to futuristic to noir. The city might lead to eternal daylight. The city may be controlled by a child-like being who creates one in the sitting room. The city is dangerous at night. And a flâneur wreaks havoc at night.

My favorite was "The Song of Serelight Fair." It had a component of mystery to it that almost all the stories did, where I was pretty much scratching my head at what had happened, but instead of it making me want to quit reading, I wanted to experience more of it. "Gallathea" is more of a straight detective story, and "Good Slaughter" made me squeamish.

To try to categorize or compare this writing, I find more kindred spirits in speculative fiction, like China Miéville, or who could forget the maps of Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente. It even made me think of Mark Z. Danielewski with the house that grows and takes on a character that is to be feared, or at the very least not understood.

As far as my own experience with the Booker goes, I think I'd put it in the same category of "C" by Tom McCarthy, another book I really enjoyed while feeling I barely grasped it. I think it is incredibly good for a first "novel" (if we're calling it that) and I hope to see more from this author.

[Ben Dutton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Communion Town, by debut novelist Sam Thompson, is one of the more surprising entries in the 2012 Man Booker Prize long-list. Though the cover blurb does not advertise it as such – though it hints at it – this is a collection of ten short stories set in around the same fictional city. This, as a description, however, suggests continuity, and this is the last thing on Thompson’s mind. Much like Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the one city seen in this work changes dependent upon who is telling the story. Some of the stories are pastiche – of Sherlock Holmes, of American pulp detective fiction – some stray into science fiction, some into horror, others into thriller and romance. The novel (if we can call it that) is then a blend, a phantasmagorical journey into the night of a city where anything is possible and indeed will happen.

Being a collection of ten short pieces, there is a distinct shift in quality between the pieces. The gumshoe story – Gallathea – I found a wonderful pastiche for a few pages before quickly descending into boredom (with the styling, not the story). The Sherlock Holmes pastiche was very clever – The Significant City of Lazarus Glass (great title incidentally, with a great villain and a great ending), but because it was Thompson pretending to be Conan-Doyle pretending to be Holmes, I felt at a distance from the emotional fulcrum of the piece. This is a common problem for me with science-fiction and fantasy stories, however – that the author must exert so much effort in creating, building and sustaining his world, the emotional lives of its inhabitants comes as a secondary effort and is, as a consequence, less than engaging. Nevertheless, by the end of this work, it was this pastiche that remained the most vivid – and I dearly hope Thompson expands upon Lazarus Glass and this version of Communion Town.

Communion Town itself is a wonderful creation. By removing us from actuality, Thompson is able to play tricks on the reader a real-world setting would not allow – the laws of physics can break, monsters can be real – and I suspect it is a setting to which Thompson will return. Why waste all that effort creating the place, only to let it rot? (I mentioned the Lazarus Glass story, but I also want to know more about the first, the eponymous story, as it had me biting my nails with tension).

Thompson’s work, then, enthralled me and annoyed me equally – sometimes between stories, sometimes even in the same story – but this is not a major criticism. It is actually a good thing – for what it reveals is in Thompson we have a writer very much in control of his work, very much able to write brilliantly, and from whom we can expect exciting new works.

Will Communion Town make the short-list for the Man Booker Prize 2012?

The quality of Thompson’s prose is strong, and is ideas are very good – so from a literary perspective he has the goods – but I suspect the lack of cohesion between the individual pieces (making it a collection of short stories, not a novel) will see it dropped from the short-list. Which would be a shame, as writing as versatile and interesting as this should be celebrated and more widely read. Though I suspect his later novels will see him ignored by the Man Booker Prize, I think he might go on to win some sci-fi awards.

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure what to think of this one. It's beautifully written, and each story drew me in and made me question and tilt my head and try to figure it out, but I don't know if I found it satisfying. I wanted to know more -- of course, that's what you're meant to feel with this book, I think, so in that the author succeeds. But I look for satisfaction when I read a book, not to feel like it was a three hundred page tease -- I want a glimpse, if only a small one, into the heart of the work, the city. I wanted to go just a step or two closer to the Flâneur.

In practice, this book is not a novel but a collection of short stories, each of which is only mildly conclusive in itself, often almost circular. The opening story caught my interest with the narratorial voice, and some of the other stories in their pastiche styles amused me, but... it's like that line from The Vintner's Luck, flirtation and not love. I was entertained and amused, so it's not as though I bounced off the work entirely, but nor did I really participate.

[Wandaviolett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kurzmeinung: Schöne Sprache + Atmosphäre.
Eine indische Stadt in 10 esoterischen Sphären
Der 2012 auf der Longlist des Man Booker Prize gelandete Roman ist ein rein esoterischer Roman, machen wir uns darüber nichts vor. Die Esoteriker suchen immer etwas, was sich nicht finden lässt und vermuten hinter allen Dingen etwas Geheimes, das sich nur Eingeweihten öffnet, wenn sie genau hinschauen. Der Autor beschreibt die esoterische Grundhaltung seines in zehn Kurzgeschichten sich präsentierenden Romans in einer der Kurzgeschichten selbst sehr treffend: „In childhood he had discovered that anything could be a signal: guano on red brick blackberries under a concrete walkway, water swirling into the mouth of a storm-drain.“ Oder: „He felt a tingle of exitement at the sense that these rooms might carry on unfolding indefinitely, that the house might be a secret entrance to an unterground world ….“ (aus der Story: A way to leave). – Aber da ist eben nichts! Diese esoterische Weltsicht halte ich für ziemlich ungesund.

Der Kommentar und das Leseerlebnis:
Alle zehn Kurzgeschichten spielen in einer fiktiven, kalkuttaähnlichen Stadt. Sie gewinnt ein Gesicht durch das Naming zahlreicher Plätze und Straßen, Autumn Palace, Belltown, Twistgate, Glory Part, the Esplanade, Impasto Street, Serelight, Metro Plaza, etc. Ein Jammer, dass keine Karte vorhanden ist!
Diese Geschichten spielen vornehmlich in der Nacht, wenn finstere Gestalten, Serienmörder oder Gespenster durch die Straßen schleichen und gute Leute sich besser in den Stuben oder Bars der Stadt aufhalten, meistens heruntergekommene Leute an heruntergekommenen Plätzen. Sie erzählen von Einsamkeit und Verlorenheit, vom Verlust des Realitätssinns oder geben eine Antwort auf die Lebensfrage: was soll das alles? Antwort: no idea oder: Suche und du wirst nichts finden.
Die Stories sind in so schöner Sprache geschrieben, dass mein Nacht-Citygefühl, entweder lähmende Hitze oder schimmlige Wände und endlose Regennächte, ganz lebendig geworden ist, wenn ich auch in den esoterischen Geschichten so gut wie keinen Sinn entdecken kann und der Esoterik mit ihrem ständigen Vermuten einer zweiten und dritten Realität hinter den Dingen, wenig abgewinnn kann.

Fazit: Atmosphärisch und stilistisch große Klasse, inhaltlich Banane.

Kategorie: Anspruchsvoller Roman (?)
Auf der Longlist Man Booker Prize 2012
Verlag: Harper Collins, TB, 2013K

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not finish. Bad. Men being unable to write woman kills a book. Yes this includes most pieces of literature, no i will not be taking questions.

[Darryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This city is Epidamnus while this story is being told: when another one is told it will become another town. — Platus

Have you noticed how each of us conjures up our own city? You have your secret haunts and private landmarks and favourite short cuts and I have mine, so as we navigate the streets each of us walks through a worlds of our own invention.

This strange and uneven but fascinating "novel" (using the term loosely) is set in Communion Town, a fictional modern city which is recognizable yet sinister and inscrutable. Its places and neighborhoods have strange names, such as Shambles Heath, Strangers' Market and Gorgonstown. Its streets are often filled with days old rubbish, and most homes and shops are decrepit and unkempt. On its sidewalks, tourists and workers frequently encounter packs of wild youths, the Cynics who are a constant threat to public safety, and shabbily dressed figures who lie motionless on the ground but suddenly come to life and demand attention whenever anyone gazes upon them. The nights are filled with even more dangers, as malevolent flâneurs and ghost-like figures prey upon unwary passersby.

The book consists of ten stories, in which the characters within each chapter view and describe the city from different vantage points, in the manner of individuals who describe an elephant from different angles. Unlike the stories in books such as Other Lives by André Brink and Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz, which are also set in one city, the main characters in the different chapters of Communion Town do not interact with each other, although rarely a figure who seems familiar makes an appearance at the periphery, then disappears once you gaze in his direction. Several of the chapters are hauntingly brilliant, particularly "Communion Town", which opens the book, in which a voyeuristic narrator speaks to a recent young female immigrant who he fancies, whose partner has mysteriously disappeared within the city; "Good Slaughter", based on a slaughterhouse worker who holds a deep resentment and suspicion of his new supervisor; and "The Significant City of Lazarus Glass", based on a murder mystery involving the city's most respected private investigator and his arch nemesis, who was a dear friend and trusted colleague before he became the city's most feared and elusive criminal. Other stories were well written but less captivating, and a few were trivial and overly clever.

As a whole, the stories in Communion Town had a dreamlike but dark quality to them, with an ever present sense of fear, uncertainty and menace. The book is best read as a collection of beautifully written but unrelated stories about a mysterious city the first time around, and those who wish to give it a second try can look for the apparent connections between the chapters and their characters.

I was prepared to dislike this book, after I lightly read several lukewarm reviews in the British newspapers and negative comments by private readers. However, I was captivated by it, despite its unevenness, and unlike many I do think it deserved its inclusion in last year's Booker Prize longlist. It is a unique and unsettling debut work by a talented author who is willing to take risks and succeeds more often than he fails.

[Jason Edwards · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am giving Communion Town two stars for the simple reason that I did not enjoy it much. I can’t say that it is a good book, and I don’t want to be guilty of pandering to a kind of hive-intelligentsia just because it was chosen for the 2012 Booker long list. Let these ratings stand for how one liked the book, not how one assumes it will be received by literary critics. I’ve never read anything else by this author, and freely admit that maybe I just didn’t “get it.”

Ten stories, apparently, and according to some blurb somewhere, all of them about the same city. I guess. I didn’t feel any kind of cohesiveness between the stories at all. If this was a fictional town, I didn’t get any sense of its character. If it’s supposed to be a fictionalization of a real city, I have no idea which city. And, again, maybe that’s just me—I’m sure someone has written books about New York and London and Paris and LA and Tokyo. This was none of those.

The truth is I got stuck on one of the stories, and it took me a lot longer to read this than it should have. It was all so very atmospheric without having any atmosphere. So much descriptive meditation, with nothing described. And odd bits tossed in, unexplained and unexplored and even unexploited.

Which is why I’m giving it two stars, because normally, I just love a well-crafted sentence. Maybe these were supposed to be that, but I kept falling asleep. I found myself not picking up the book when I did have time, but choosing to do other things. Honestly, the only reason I finished is because I’ve committed myself to reading all the long list books this year.

Don’t get me wrong—bits of it were good. I liked the one about the city of the mind and the almost cartoonish detectives. The one about the semi-invalid woman had potential, and the one about the serial killer and the abattoir. That all sounds like juicy stuff, right? But like I said, unexplained and unexploited.

Maybe it’s time for me to admit I’m no literarian myself, and that I just like a good story. If that’s so, then, two stars for Communion Town, as there’s really no story there at all.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliantly rendered prose. This is a rich complex network of stories which are supposedly subtly linked, but for the most part I couldn't see those relationships. The stories require vigilance and concentration. Reading the stories of Communion Town was to constantly be reminded that the reader is only a visitor there, and will never really understand that odd and vaguely menacing place.
This is Sam Thompson's first novel but his writing is remarkably assured and confident. He has an amazing facility for writing in different voices, most notably in 'Gallathea', a dynamic and muscular hardboiled-crime style story, replete with a gumshoe detective that calls women "dames". In 'The Significant City of Lazarus Glass', the story is told in the style of a Sherlock Holmes caper, and even ends with satisfyingly, albeit bizarrely twisted, inevitable logic. "City Room" is told from a child's knee-high view and is tinged with inarticulate fears of things that can't be understood.
At the edges of the stories are shadows of creatures and of the Flaneur, ill-defined, barely mentioned, and swiftly abandoned when they feel the reader's gaze.

[Selena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd like to buy my own copy of this and reread it a few times. This world Sam Thompson created is so intriguing and interesting.

When someone means that much to you, you don't have many choices, do you, much as you may pretend you're free to do as you like. That other person is threaded into you as deep as your own soul - you hold his imagine in your mind, always, and you hope he keeps an imagine of you, because in the end that's the only place where you can live secure and complete. You know that if you were to vanish from the world it would be in that person's thoughts that you lingered, for a while at least, after you were gone. -pg 11, Communion Town

The interval of two notes could divide your heart and the tug of words against rhythm could mend it: I'd stumbled on the means to say whatever was true in this life. I only wanted the skill to do it. - pg 45, The Song of Serelight Fair

Where she first came from, he has no way of imagining: he has never considered what she is like in herself. - pg 84, The City Room

I had many things in mind that were my concern alone, nothing to do with him; in my thoughts were futures he could never have hoped to imagine. Soon now I'd set out for other places and for the rest of what I planned. Let's try this one more time, kid ... Before that, though, I'd find him, and give him what he needed never to cease from seeking. -pg 140, Gallathea

'What kind of city is it,' he asked, 'where we sit here and gobble up this stuff, then shake our heads and do nothing? And tomorrow we buy the paper again for more. How do we explain it to ourselves? Tell ourselves we're not responsible? Doing nothing has its own cost.' -pg 164, Good Slaughter

You can go out among your fellow creatures but you can't stay out there forever. You have to come back in. It's not so easy to leave your account once you've begun it. It always wants you back. The pink slip is in your hands: rub the paper between finger and thumb. Think of Fischer. Think of the Flâneur.

One of his eyes is looking out between the first and second fingers of my gauntlet, and the eye is asking me a question. This won't take long. There will be no suffering. I've said what I can, I've given my account, and what happens afterwards is not my concern. The good slaughterer knows his skills have their place. He does the work. - pg 168, Good Slaughter

With some people, shared experience drives you apart in the end; it teaches you that you don't have so much in common after all, and the things you've said and done toge4her become an embarrassment you don't want to exacerbate. - pg 230, Outside the Days

On her way home she had reflected that there must be certain people in the world, a very few, with whom you'll neve rneed to search for what to say, and you know you'll never reach the end. -pg 276, A Way to Leave

[Aaron (Typographical Era) · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the exception of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, which is a fairly straightforward by the numbers ordeal, all of entries that make up this year’s Man Booker longlist seem to share at least one commonality. In their own way each title attempts to challenge the reader’s idea of what they believe a novel should be. As its subtitle succinctly points out, Communion Town does so by playing with the boundaries imposed by standardized structure. Is this truly “A City in Ten Chapters” or is it a series of short stories cleverly disguised as a novel, much like that other undeserving mess of a “collection” that won the Pulitzer Prize two years ago because writing in PowerPoint is oh-so-clever? The answer is that it’s clearly both, but in the case of this one, that’s a very good thing.

One of my fellow BookerMarkers was irate at Will Self and abandoned his longlisted title Umbrella before finishing it, throwing up her hands in frustration and lamenting the lack of editing, paragraphs, chapters, formatting etc. Self challenged her idea of what a novel should be and she resisted embracing his alterative view in favor of what she’s more comfortable with, traditional structure. To a much lesser degree Thompson plays the same game within the pages of his novel. Don’t worry, there’s formatting galore, that’s not the issue. Figuring out how everything fits together, or doesn’t, that’s where the challenge comes in.

READ MORE:
http://www.opinionless.com/book-revie...

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Communion Town is elegantly written, but it reads like a technical writing exercise in which the author demonstrates his facility in terms of genre, imagery, and dialogue. It is enjoyable and very well written, don't get me wrong. I recommend the book.....but perhaps not as the Man Booker Prize winner. The plots are unoriginal, although interesting, the structure of the book (telling the story of a city from multiple perspectives), while not hackneyed, has certainly been done before in both film and literature, and as I mentioned above, the genre and styles are borrowed from other authors (e.g. Dashell Hammett/Raymond Chandler, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Haddon). None of these criticisms (comments) is fatal in and of themselves, but combined they project a sense of over-eagerness in the author, as though Thompson is desperate to prove himself. Perhaps if Thompson brought a fresh perspective to these genre, themes, plots etc. it wouldn't feel so flat. Alas, I found Communion Town to be simply a well written and creative amalgam of the "best of" sci-fi, thriller and romance.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

My life was on hold the second I picked this book up. What a mightily impressive debut. A series of ten short stories all set in one fictionalised, timeless city. While there are some shared threads between the stories, they are tenuous to say the least.

As with all short story collections, the quality varies. The first couple are outstanding and 'The Song of Serelight Fair' (the second story), is particularly haunting and completely hypnotic.

The two weakest stories in my opinion are pastiches of classic pulp fiction and a Sherlock Holmes style whodunit. These are both very cleverly written but (like Ben Dutton says in his excellent review) after a few pages it started to wane for me.

What I took most from Communion Town was a great hope for the future work from Sam Thompson. Clearly a very gifted writer and I for one can’t wait to see what’s next.

[Amanda Van Parys · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you enjoy books that constantly make you question if you're missing something then you'll love this.

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

very interesting stuff; literary and needs time to process, but I see why it got nominated; hope to finish it this week

INTRODUCTION: "A city in ten chapters.

Every city is made of stories: stories that intersect and diverge, stories of the commonplace and the strange, of love and crime, of ghosts and monsters.

In this city an asylum seeker struggles to begin a new life, while a folk musician pays with a broken heart for a song and a butcher learns the secrets of the slaughterhouse. A tourist strays into a baffling ritual and a child commits an incalculable crime; private detectives search the streets for their archenemies and soulmates and, somewhere in the shadows, a figure which might once have been human waits to tell its tale.

Communion Town is a city in ten chapters: a place imagined differently by each citizen, mixing the everyday with the gothic and the uncanny; a place of voices half-heard, sights half-glimpsed and desires half-acknowledged. It is a virtuosic first novel from a young writer of true talent"

When the 2012 Man Booker longlist was announced, three novels from it were talked about as being sffnal and as mentioned in my post on the topic, I decided I would take a look at them when I have a chance.

I read, loved and reviewed The Teleportation Accident and I opened, hated and put down Umbrella by Will Self - all capital words and exclamation points everywhere are things I strongly dislike - while Communion Town turned out to be a remarkable experience overall, but with two caveats: first that it is not a novel even in the loose way of The Islanders or Things We Didn't See Coming, but a collection of unrelated stories set in the imaginary city of the title.

And then as the style of each story varies so much, some will work better than others, but that will be quite a personal experience in a way a more stylistically unified work would not. The stories will mesmerize you, they will tease you, they will offer promises and then they will end...

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Here I will offer a short discussion of each story and its first few lines as proof of the extraordinary stylistic range Sam Thompson shows in the book:

I - Communion Town

In the opening act we are introduced to the City through the voice of an all-knowing bureaucrat spying on two newcomers:

"Do you remember how you came to this city, Ulya? Think back, because we need to agree on what happened right from the start. I want to help him out as much as you do, believe me. I know you’re worried, and in your place I’d be the same – but I can promise you that conditions are actually quite tolerable in there. So let’s approach this calmly. When I’ve said what I have to say, I’m going to offer you an opportunity, and I hope you’ll feel able to respond."

This opening paragraph is another one that will make an updated "memorable first lines" post and which made Communion Town a must read. The story delivers on its promise and more.

II - The Song of Serelight Fair

The longest and best of the 10 stories; poor boy, rich girl, music. Awesome and I wish this story did not end...

"I saw her on the street today. Another pedestrian pushed in front of me and she was there, already moving past, carrying a takeaway espresso and grasping the strap of her shoulder bag. She’d bought a smart new coat for the autumn, and her hair was cut above the shoulders, but it was the old shade of red again. I ducked towards a news-stand as if I were studying the magazines. She’d prefer that, I thought. She had somewhere to go. For the space of a single footstep, there was nothing in between us but air, and I could have spoken to her without raising my voice, but then the space widened and rush hour commuters filled it, pushing us further and further apart. I followed her for a short distance, just to see if I could stay close, but she outpaced me and I lost her as she boarded a tram. As I watched her disappear a song came into my head, an old song I used to know. I’ve been singing it to myself ever since."

III - The City Room

The first story narrated in third person; a boy living with his grandmother, his toys, his imagination and an adventure you decide its reality or lack of such. Another hit of the book and my second favorite story.

"In from the street, through the hall and down, one palm making a squeak on the bannister, his feet pattering softly on the stairs, he can go at such a speed and still be so quiet. As he enters the dim corridor his eyes crowd with blocks of a colour that doesn’t have a name, a colour that no one else has discovered."

IV - Gallathea

Noir; well, sort of as the detective's investigative target may or may not exist in the same temporal place with him. This is the second longest piece of the book and the first somewhat disappointing one for me as it was quite predictable after a while. Back to first person and while indeed the voice is Chandlerian, I kind of outgrew that a long time ago.

"Let’s try this one more time, kid. Let’s get this straight.
Why did you do it?

1. Breakfast with Violence

That day, the day the Cherub boys came looking for me, I was down at Meaney’s."

V - Good Slaughter

Now, this is how dark fiction should be written to convey suspense and well, darkness; an expert butcher's musings on life on the "slaughter line" and his growing suspicions that his unlikable boss is the famous serial killer "the Flaneur" that has been stalking the city for a long time and who may or may not be real. Excellent stuff and while I prefer a few other more intimate stories, this is a highlight of the book.

"Work stopped a heartbeat back. There’s no hush like the hush when the machinery shuts off. It’s an uproar of silence. We keep our thoughts private. The workers remove their goggles, hard hats and earplugs, peel off their spattered overalls, scrub their hands at the sanitary stations and file to the exits. The concrete gleams. Clear droplets form on steel points, swelling and falling, mechanical, slower and slower. They don’t want to count away the time that’s left."

VI - Three Translations

Back to third person in a story that brings a "foreign view" to the city, as former school friends Dawn - working for a couple of years in Communion Town - and Andie, just visiting, meet by chance. However it is Andie who sees and understands more, while Dawn seems stuck in a forever translating role. This is a good story with a lot of subtle touches and undercurrents, but I felt something was missing to make it a truly great one.

"Dawn was walking home along the seafront when a voice called her name. As she looked around, a tall, fair-haired girl hefted a rucksack on her shoulder and started forward, shading her eyes against the hard sunlight, almost colliding with a cyclist as he zipped by. The tall girl, whose name was Andie, called out again. A man selling treats from an icebox slung across his chest was watching with interest."

VII - The Significant City of Lazarus Glass

Holmesian pastiche, but well done and very inventive and entertaining, though you can see the denouement quite a way out. Still a highlight of the book and the most straightforward "accessible" story as style goes.

"Exquisite enigmas, mysteries sinister and bizarre: for Peregrine Fetch these were at once a vocation and the keenest happiness in life. As an archive of the gruesome and the perplexing his casebook is without peer and yet, even there, the details of his final adventure must strike the interpreter as anomalous. It may be that we have yet to grasp the whole pattern of the crimes."

VIII - Outside the Days

Short but excellent and another example of how to write suspense without any overt violence. The good looking, interesting, well connected, seemingly successful Stephen and the less socially adept narrator in a role reversal...

"When Stephen’s message came I had nearly forgotten him. Time passes, and on most days he never entered my thoughts, or if he did it was faintly and far off. But without warning now he wanted to see me again, and, although he didn’t say why, I could find no way not to agree. I found myself walking along Impasto Street on a dark afternoon in mid-December when some influence had sent people out into the city in large numbers, jostling to spend money, zealous and hard-faced, shouldering each other aside."

IX - The Rose Tree

Another story that tries to "rough it out" and in consequence, it did not really work for me. The least favorite story of mine and one I thought the book could do without.

"A few of us were in the café that night. On this side of town there aren’t many places to go, so when we feel the need of a drink or some quiet company through the hours of darkness, we come here, where Dilks keeps serving till dawn. For as long as the season lasts, everyone knows that once dark has fallen you don’t go out again before morning."

X - A Way to Leave

Back to third person and the intimate. This is a quieter story and it contains for once two points of view as we see both Simon and Florence's perspectives as a seemingly mismatched couple. But there is more subtlety involved than Simon's whining from the first few pages implies and I actually liked this one quite a lot in its understated prose. A good way to leave indeed...

"Simon knelt with his body locked from groin to throat until the muscles opened and he succeeded in pouring out a caustic mixture of liquid and gas. When he could breathe again he flushed away the waste, rinsed his mouth and stood in front of the mirror, trying to decide whether the pain had lessened. The left side of his head throbbed from the eye-socket to the roots of the teeth.His migraines had been getting worse, forcing him to spend whole days lying half-awake in the darkened bedroom. In his dream Florence had murdered him but everyone had agreed that he was to blame."

Overall, Communion Town is a highly recommended book that offers an exquisite reading experience with its many voices in an imaginary city that vividly comes to life.

[Natalie Awdry · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I really enjoyed this debut novel from literature professor, Sam Thompson, I can definitely see why this wouldn't appeal to all readers. At times the language was overly verbose and flowery which could be seen as pompous and may put off less confident readers, or those who cannot invest the time to sit with a book and a dictionary open on their laps. Equally, for those readers who like the storyline to be neatly tied up and have the usual beginning, middle and end, this book will be a confusing disappointment.

That being said, I really enjoyed this book of ten short stories about the city of Communion Town. I would have given Communion Town 5 stars except for the fact that two of the stories, Gallathea and Significant City of Lazarus felt like a parody of old-fashioned detective novels and felt so trite and cliché that, especially during the Significant City of Lazarus, I really struggled to complete the story before skipping ahead to the next one.

Of the other stories, it is hard to define my favourite between the Song of Serelight Fair, the idea of music being a physical memory and an exploration of the class system; and Good Slaughter, a beautifully poetic, descriptive and emotive tale of an abattoir worker. Neither of these tales had a conclusive ending, and both of them introduced potentially complex and unbelievable supernatural concepts but due to Thompson's illusive way of writing them in to the story and lack of explanation these were not spoilt and allowed the reader to use their own beliefs and understandings. I personally struggle with any form of fantasy or sci-fi and I think that it is due to the author trying to explain away a concept which I know to be untrue - this was not the case with Communion Town and I thoroughly enjoyed it as a result.

I was very intrigued by the style of narration and thought that there was something unusual about A Way To Leave and The City Room which, at least to my mind, were the only stories not narrated by a character telling a tale about another person. I could really feel and picture the places in the book and could imagine myself wandering the streets of the city. The descriptions, especially in The Rose Tree, were fabulously immersive and I would attribute that to the knowledgable, and yet impersonal, form of narration.

This idea of vague and unexplained supernatural phenomenon is something which continued to play a role through the majority of the stories with the introduction of the shadowy figure of the flaneur. This appeared to be the main thread tying the stories together (aside from the city itself, of course) and I can see how people would be frustrated trying to find other links between the stories. I think that that is to the detriment of each of the individual short stories which, by themselves, evoke such emotion and strength of feeling to be wonderful standalone tales. Instead of reading this as one book about a city in ten chapters, I read this as ten separate stories and delighted in finding small elements and themes which provided a consistent thread between them.

[D. Krauss · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a novel. This is a short story collection...scratch that, it’s an essay collection disguised as a short story collection disguised as a novel. And that may put you off but don’t be: if you’ve got the time, go ahead and read this. It’s pretty good. Read it for the craft. But not for much else.

Because that’s the big sell for this...novel, alright, let’s call it that…how well the ten stories are written. How well and exactly alike all of the stories are written. How one story or all of them are pretty much written in that MFA-sophisticated style of intended meaning and shades of meaning and shared meaning and meaning meaning meaning so that you can read any meaning you want into any character or story, like a bunch of MFA grads late at night in a nondescript bar in a nondescript foggy city sharing meaningful looks.

You catch my meaning?

Of course not, and you won’t from this, either. It is ten stories set in a city that does not exist, like Bellona in Samuel Delany's Dahlgren, or Gene Wolfe’s city of the New Sun or Michael Moorcock’s city at the end of time but no no no, that means this is science fiction or fantasy and no no no, it’s none of that, it’s the City as Metaphor for Meaning even though there’s monsters and dimensions and odd goings on but don’t dare think this is speculative fiction because that’s just so gauche because this is...art.

Art. Yeah, that’s it.

And I must say, these stories are artistic. Very well written. Very intriguing, very atmospheric and filled with meaning...okay, alright, I’ll stop. I like the story about the rickshaw driver the most (hey wait, a rickshaw, so is this Hong Kong? No! It’s not any city and it’s all cities, don’t you get it?). I liked the detective noir story the least because it is soooo aware of itself (oh, wow, that’s like such a meaningful phrase...).

Stop it.

Don’t go into this thinking there’s a story, or that the stories are actually stories. They’re not. They’re art. And if you don’t get it, then you’re a bourgeois shop keeper.

Like me.

[Clancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was like reading a particularly dark, twisted, and magical Jim Jarmusch film.

Presented in a series of ten vignettes all set in the same weird city, in a plane of existence quite like ours, but not all the way. Communion Town bridges a space between novel and short story collection, and this murky intermingling of forms suits the similarly murky intermingling of the grounded and fantastic, real and incorporeal, that permeates every narrative with the stubbornness of a slow flood of water snaking under your door.

The chronology of the chapters is mind-bending. I've got no idea where in the story of this city these stories slot in, but I've got an idea what the first one (the oldest, time-wise) is. Like any good piece of prose, but especially short stories (like these kinda are), Communion Town drops you into each narrative as late as the piece as possible. Just as important is the impression that while the stories presented are lean and narrow in scope and duration, the world in which they exist is fully realised in the author's mind. The city, it's inhabitants, it's politics, and particularly its mythology exists outside the little windows we're peaking in through.

The spectre of the flâneur and how its mythology shifts and changes between time period and social class is utterly fascinating. It's like there's this whole story being told in the space outside and in between the stories that are actually being told. Trying to discern its presence when it's not explicitly mentioned, catching hints of its mythological origins in off-hand pieces of conversation, trying to figure out if characters in earlier chapters were its manifestation or not, it functioned almost like a macguffin for me as the reader.

This thing's real good, and I could go on spoiling shit, but I won't. It's not clear to me why this isn't worthy of 5 out of 5, but there was just something a little awry that saw it stop short of being truly incredible.

Weird, mind-bendy, cerebral, and a bit rough around the edges. It's a good time.

[Siobhan Markwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each chapter of this portrait of a shifting, liminal, personified city is written in a completely different style, from Chandler to Conan Doyle, we take a whistle stop genre tour with Thompson at the helm. This city is any city but, while there are fragmentary descriptions that are instantly recognisable as precise locations in London or Barcelona, it is all cities and none. Its beating, dark heart is a dark, furtive and vaguely malignant flaneur who longs for his story to be heard and truly understood but whose listeners cannot bear the grotesque weight of his tale. They flee and we feel they are poisoned beyond redemption by the fleeting contact they have with him. It won't be everyone's cup of tea and it is, in truth, a pastiche of lyrical tone poems rather than a structured novel as such. Even so, as modern gothic, I found it impressive, empathic and moving. Thompson gives us every city but his characters could live in the next street.

[Mieneke · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a while time since I've read a contemporary, mainstream work, that could be categorised as 'literary fiction', the last one was in August last year, and that one had a strong genre slant, as it was a post-apocalyptic tale. And while Communion Town certainly has genre elements, for me it falls squarely in the literary fiction section—and yes, I agree, literary fiction is as much a genre as speculative fiction, but that's a wholly different discussion and an entirely different post. This collection of ten stories is difficult to describe in one adjective. Interesting doesn't do it justice, because it's more than that, it was a thought-provoking read. At the same time, I found reading it really hard work, having to reread passages quite often and generally reading at a slower pace than I usually do. But while at times a bit of a slog, it was never boring. So I find myself at a bit of a loss as to how to judge this book. Taken separately, I'd say many of these stories are quite good, while those that don't stand as well alone are enhanced by the whole. However, I don't know whether I'd say that the collection as such worked for me, mostly because despite all being set in the same city, I kept looking for a further cohesion between the tales, a theme if you will, which they all shared. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it, but I'm not sure whether that's a failing of the text or me failing as a reader.

In fact, there were some returning threads, such as the Flaneûr and the man who wants to share his story. There is a lot of loneliness and lost people. Communion Town isn't a happy place. Beyond that the true nature of the city remained elusive. Sometimes it felt like Victorian London, sometimes like a place in a totalitarian state behind the Iron Curtain. Sometimes it would seem any modern, contemporary city. But most of the time these senses of time and place got disturbed but an unexpected element from a different time, because a character is said to wear jeans or to use an anachronistic device. In addition there are lots of different genre influences, but nothing strong enough to tip the collection solidly into the speculative or crime fiction arena. There is some horror, some supernatural elements, lots of gothic and a large crime component. In fact, The Significant City of Lazarus Glass is largely shaped like a Holmesian mystery.

Thompson conducts some interesting prose experiments, such as in the titular story were the reader is being put in the seat of Ulya and the story is told in the second person by a nameless narrator. It creates immediacy, confusion and irritation. Immediacy, because the you addressed seems to be the reader, confusion because it never becomes clear who the narrator is and why you're having this conversation, and irritation because the narrator is rather smug and keeps telling you what you felt. Gallathea features a circular narrative, where the story starts with a question circling round to the beginning again, but never quite answering the question that starts off the story. Good Slaughter told is partly in the first person present, shifting to first person past and back to present, creating a sense that the narrator zoned out for a few seconds and the story is told in that short flash before the action resumes. The stories often feature nameless main characters and/or narrators – such as in The City Room, The Song of Serelight Fair, and Outside the Days – which I'm not really used to.

My favourites were unsurprisingly the ones that served up the most familiar elements to provide some footing to get my bearings story-wise. They were The Song of Serelight Fair which is a love story and the story of how a relationship and the expectations of the other can stifle one's soul; The Significant City of Lazarus Glass, which is both a murder mystery and a meditation of the nature of memory and the possibility of the mnemonic techniques, such as the memory palace; and The City Room, which didn't really have any strong genre elements, but whose main character, who displayed some symptoms of having a disorder on the autism spectrum, was quite compelling to me as I have a lot of experience with kids that have an autistic disorder. All three of these gave lots of food for thought, despite being hung from more recognizable tropes, especially The Significant City of Lazarus Glass and its fascinating play with memory, reality, and sanity.

Again, I struggled with Communion Town. I found it hard to find its soul, though arguably this was the city, which I never got a true feel for and as a consequence didn't connect to. However, there are lovely passages and flashes of beauty in the text. In the end, I think Communion Town deserves to be read for its thought-provoking concepts. You might love it, enjoy it, or hate it, but it'll exercise your brain. In the end, I'd recommend it, but with the following caveat: don't go into this thinking you'll get a nice, quick read; go into it expecting to be challenged.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

***

As an added bonus, the publisher's posted a video to Youtube in which Sam Thompson discusses his inspirations. I found it quite interesting and as I watched it after I'd read it and written the review also rather enlightening.

[Dan Coxon · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible debut that made the Booker Prize longlist, it's hard to see why Communion Town's rating isn't higher on here. I can only imagine that people expected it to be something other than what it is. The storytelling is bold and inventive, creating an atmosphere and setting that reminded me in places of Jeff VanderMeer's early work. While it's engrossing from start to finish, though, it's clearly a collection of connected stories rather than a traditional novel, which may have alienated some readers. If you're willing to accept this fragmented structure, then this is a startlingly bold and strange book that deserves all the accolades - and more.

[Georgie W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Communion Town invites readers into a labyrinth of interconnected stories, each a glimpse into the multifaceted heart of a city. The prose is haunting, the images vivid, and Sam Thompson crafts a mesmerizing tapestry of urban life, inviting us to wander its streets and alleys in search of meaning. The novel explores themes of isolation, connection, and the elusive nature of truth. I found it to be a captivating journey that transcends genre boundaries, exploring the human condition and the mysteries that lie beneath the surface of everyday existence.

[Eve Taft · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the maze-like feeling of this book. It has that magical ability to be a larger world than the reader is let into, but one can still trace the threads. I agree with other reviewers that "The Song of Serelight Fair" is perhaps the best story, but all of it was enjoyable. Thompson's prose is beautiful, and the story he tells us is gripping.

[Alexander Ballantyne · Rating 1 out of 5]

In theory I should love this book. I tried, I really tried. I made it to about 80% and just had to give up despite being close to finishing it. A little shanty towered over by Ambergris and New-Crobuzon.

[Terill Ketcham · Rating 5 out of 5]

You have already read this book in your sleep



With great clarity of description and vision, unique concepts and strong execution, and a particular slipstream atmosphere, this was a very enjoyable read.

[Mitchell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I do have such wonderful taste in Booker Prize predictions – I finished this one the day it was dropped from the list.

Communion Town is a “city in ten chapters,” which is a fancy way of saying that it’s a bunch of short stories with a few mild links, all taking place inside the same constantly shifting, everywhere-but-nowhere metropolis. I’m quite partial to stories that explore and celebrate the concept of the city – see Brandon Graham, China Mieville, Jeff Vandermeer, and, I suppose, Philip Reeve. Communion Town may well be the book that breaks that spell for me. I found myself not only disliking its obsession with the the city, but disliking even the fact that Thompson thought anyone might be interested in it.

The city of Communion Town is unnamed, many of the characters in the stories are unnamed, and even the more interesting parts of the book – the nameless horrors which lurk in the night-time alleyways, desperately accosting people to “tell them a story” – go unnamed and unexplained. Thompson usually deals more in thought and introspection and summary than he does in concrete things like dialogue and scene and, well, plot. The city is meant to be every city, any city, no city – which works less as a celebration of urbanity and more as an irritating conceit which prevents the book from ever achieving any sense of place. Thompson’s preference for generalisations over specifics, for summary over scene, quickly becomes tiresome. Example:

Every pleasure palls. In a short time Stephen had learnt to drink deep of experimental delights that would have frightened most of us if we understood them, but the richer the meal, the sooner the appetite wanes, and the epicurean longs for more exotic flavours. He never saw himself as a sybarite; he thought of his explorations as light-hearted, even a kind of joke. But anyone can drift away from themselves when nothing is forbidden. Before he realised it the mask wouldn’t come off: he was corrupt with luxury, famished with feasting. The society knew how to watch for its moment. His mind and body were precise instruments for their own indulgence, but his imagination was sickly with exhaustion. He had fallen into the lassitude of one who has gone too far in the secret regions of experience, achieved too much in the sphere of private ambitions; now the tawdriness of the world was making him ill. His exquisite appetites troubled him more than ever but there was nothing, it seemed, that could answer anymore to his needs. He was bored.

So was I. How can you expend so many words and yet say so little? The result of passages like this – strung into stories, strung into a “novel” – is that I never connected with a single character, never connected with the city, never really cared about what was going on. It was one of those books I had to force myself to finish.

I saw nothing of the “genre pastiche” that had reviewers comparing this to the far superior David Mitchell. I only noticed two stories rendered in a deliberate genre style, that of Sam Spade and then Sherlock Holmes. Both of these were awkwardly written, with imitation prose interrupted by Thompson’s own flights of philosophical fancy – so that, for example, a gumshoe getting roughed up by thugs in a dirty alleyway pauses to notice a black and gold lizard watching him from a trash can, and reflects that he’d “never seen one like it in the city.” (So much beauty in the world!) The stories, for the most part, lap over onto each other like waves of tedious melodrama, and I barely noticed when shifting from one to another except to mark my relief that the book was drawing closer to its conclusion.

Last year’s Booker longlist, for all its scandal about “readability,” featured a number of very interesting novels that took the trouble to tell a story. This year’s has shoved the gearstick back up to highbrow, and I’m sure Sam Thompson’s Communion Town isn’t the only nominee that sacrifices function for form; I’ve heard nightmarish things about Will Self’s Umbrella, and an article Ned Beauman wrote about himself in The Awl was marinated in arrogance and put me off ever reading any of his books. The Booker committee is welcome to their summer of difficult, tedious novels that are more pre-occupied with self-absorbed experimentation than they are with telling stories or saying something worthwhile.

I could end the review there, but I feel like I’ve been a bit too vitriolic for a first novel, so I’ll mention a couple of redeeming factors. Thompson is certainly skilled with the written word, and there are sentences or passages of description in Communion Town which paint a vivid picture and genuinely stand out. (He just needs to learn to restrain himself when delving into his characters’ mental geography.) The book is an experiment in what can be accepted as a novel, and originality should always be encouraged. (He just needs to realise that experimentation must be tempered, and that not everyone will be as interested in his conceits as he is.) And, finally, I’m in the minority- most people seem to have liked Communion Town. So there you go, make your own decision.