Saccade

by Chris Bell, Elisa Bowman (Design)

Saccade – a novella “Chris Bell’s Saccade is a beautifully constructed, heartfelt work. Expertly weaving in multiple plotlines, Bell creates a story of loss, love, and ultimately redemption … It is, of course, a testament to his skill that he constructs such a complex plot without allowing too many threads to slip away, but that he is so precise with his diction is what sets him apart from other writers. He has a gift for emotionally loaded, short, concise statements.” Sophia Ioannou, Seven Stories Press sac·cade (sa’ n. [French, twitch, from Old North French saqiuer, to pull] any of the rapid, involuntary jumps made by the eyes from one fixed point to another. Sam Kite is plagued by panic attacks, lives alone and works in a dead-end job. But like most of the people he knows, he only pretends to be working. His life is pathetic. He lives in fear of “The Almighty Crunch”, which he senses is impending. His only release is his collection of films on DVD. When his half-hearted suicide attempt is foiled by a nameless ‘guardian stranger’, by chance Kite encounters “The White Woman”, an eye-catching squatter whose grace is undeniable and unavoidable. Her name is Grace Starling. Grace is deep; a once seen, never to be forgotten kind of woman who lives with a loose collective of graffiti artists, environmentalists and political activists in a terrace of condemned buildings. The street is about to be redeveloped by billionaire industrialist Jeroboam Rort who made his fortune from Raubbau, a company that owes its growth to ethically questionable revenue streams. Government scientist Professor Darko Adnazhevsky is onto Raubbau and its attempted cover-ups until he is arrested. An encounter with an unusual street musician whose instrument has the power to connect people with its vibrations leads Sam to discover the primal, healing powers of music. Sam almost squares off with Rort until an omnipresent companion spoils things. In the end what do we have? A man who has been on a journey and reached a destination of sorts, overseen by a narrator who would like to remain angelic but who is as unreliable as he was at the outset.

196 pages, Paperback

First published July 10, 2012

About the author

Chris Bell

The author was born in Wales in 1960. In 1976 he was the youngest poet ever to be published in former Poetry Society chairman Norman Hidden’s magazine Workshop New Poetry (UK). In January 2006 his poem about the writer Richard Brautigan, ‘The Graves Have Turned to Powdered Wind’, won the Edit Red Writers Choice Award. His poetry has been published in Axiom (Wales); Scree (England); Sivullinen (Finland); foam:e and Snorkel (Australia).

His fiction has appeared in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (Tenth Annual Edition) (US), in which his short story collection The Bumper Book of Lies received an honourable mention; The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #21; and This Is The Summer of Love (New Writers Special) (UK); Not One of Us (US); Zygote and TransVersions (Canada); Zahir (US); The Third Alternative and Postscripts (UK); The Heidelberg Review (Germany) and Takahe (New Zealand). His first novel, Liquidambar, inspired by Edward Hopper’s paintings, won the UKA Press ‘Search For A Great Read’ competition.