The Wastes

by Roy Claire Potter

After the death of her mother a woman decides to visit a familiar strip of rural upland, darkly identified on the South Pennines Ordnance Survey map as: The Waste. As she moves between trains, shunted by public encounters and haunted by past bar jobs, damp bedsits and a press shot of Vanessa Redgrave smoking in the bath, found slipped between the pages of her mother’s diary, the threshold between her past, present and future self dissolves. Fringe images she has neither designed nor authored begin to steer her toward grid reference 3499, where underfoot the semi-solid mud turns with worms and ants.

The Wastes is published as part of Arrhythmia, a series curated for Book Works by Katrina Palmer.

Roy Claire Potter works between performance and experimental art writing with recent work commissioned by Tate Britain and Tate Publishing, Reduced Listening for BBC Radio 3, Cafe OTO and Counterflows, and Primary. They are Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Liverpool John Moores University.

178 pages, Paperback

Reviews

[Sorrell]

I adored this book.

All vibes. Sketched out plot.
A woman is grappling with her Mother’s death.
The timeline skips back and forth.
Liverpool, Manchester, Haworth, Hull.
Apart from a blip in London everything takes place up North. I loved the descriptions, the observations, the incredible way she was able to depict inertia and difficulty making decisions.

It’s hard to categorise this book at all.
I think it flirts with Japanese surreal auto fiction.
Definitely a book to float along with.
Funny at times, harrowing at times.

Pure brilliance.

[Paul]

There's so much going on in this elegant and beautifully readable book. In its opening sequence that presents the death of the mother as the start of the narrative it made me think of Camus but I think I will return to this and will keep finding new things. Fabulous.

[Mia]

Will read this author's next novel.
Great writing, subtle and honest. I feel like I have met this character on my travels.
You can read this in one evening.
I'm also a big fan of Vanessa Redgrave!!! (the author's mother was).... Just read it.

[George Bate]

One of the best things I've read in the past few yeares. An indictment of systems that lead to poverty and precarity as much as an examination of the idea of selfhood - and so much more.

[useyourimogenation]

heartfelt thanks to roy claire for writing a freak like me