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A distant likeness
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Hardcover
Published January 1, 1973
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About the author
Paul Bailey
173 books28 followersPeter Harry "Paul" Bailey was a British novelist and critic, as well as a biographer of Cynthia Payne and Quentin Crisp.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 29, 2023
Well you got the distant right. Somewhere many miles along the tenuous wires there was a plot, but the messages were so heavily encoded, I didn't have much of a clue what was going on the other end.
While I've been enjoying Bailey, by the end of 'A Distant Likeness' I understood why this one is more of a rarity. The prose gets sliced and diced like the murder victims it describes, between longer passages of struttingly profane dialogue that just briefly break beyond babble into some sort of sense. Bailey writes with verve that you sense he relishes, so there is some infectious enjoyment to be had. It was certainly more mysterious than the clichéd genre detective story it deconstructs. This is Agatha Christie as a forensic crime scene of scattered clues, thrown like so much chopped entrails all across the walls and floor. The idea was ambitious and knowingly experimental but for such a tiny novella, it's a bad sign that I found myself counting down the pages to the end.
Mine was a slightly more expensive than average ex libris copy, which came with two pleasant surprises. The first was it's stamp for Wolverhampton Library. The book itself represents an artefact of Slade-era 1973, and the city just down the tracks from where I live. The second surprise was the cover, which both accurately represents the turmoil of words within, while elevating the effect with a monochromatic mania of faces.
Overall, this felt like Bailey's fever-dream, made me wonder how much Bailey had been experimenting with contemporary psychedelics when he sat down to write. Nestled as the third of his first four novels, this was my least favourite. Wires crossed, this was LSD - Literary Semaphore Delirium.
While I've been enjoying Bailey, by the end of 'A Distant Likeness' I understood why this one is more of a rarity. The prose gets sliced and diced like the murder victims it describes, between longer passages of struttingly profane dialogue that just briefly break beyond babble into some sort of sense. Bailey writes with verve that you sense he relishes, so there is some infectious enjoyment to be had. It was certainly more mysterious than the clichéd genre detective story it deconstructs. This is Agatha Christie as a forensic crime scene of scattered clues, thrown like so much chopped entrails all across the walls and floor. The idea was ambitious and knowingly experimental but for such a tiny novella, it's a bad sign that I found myself counting down the pages to the end.
Mine was a slightly more expensive than average ex libris copy, which came with two pleasant surprises. The first was it's stamp for Wolverhampton Library. The book itself represents an artefact of Slade-era 1973, and the city just down the tracks from where I live. The second surprise was the cover, which both accurately represents the turmoil of words within, while elevating the effect with a monochromatic mania of faces.
Overall, this felt like Bailey's fever-dream, made me wonder how much Bailey had been experimenting with contemporary psychedelics when he sat down to write. Nestled as the third of his first four novels, this was my least favourite. Wires crossed, this was LSD - Literary Semaphore Delirium.
Displaying 1 of 1 review