The Look Away

by Richard Skelton

A wounded man in a fugue state hides out in a deserted north-country shieling, convinced that he is pursued. Over the days and weeks that follow, as no one comes to claim him, his mind turns from his pursuers to the hills themselves, and their other-than-human inhabitants. Gradually he is caught up in a drama that can have only one conclusion.

After nearly a decade of writing poetry and non-fiction, Richard Skelton has arrived at a form that is most like the music for which he is the slow accumulation of mood and atmosphere, the repetition of stark phrases, the bleak beauty, the loam and grit. In The Look Away , Skelton has written a powerful, intensely bleak, yet redemptive, novella that redraws mythic lines and repositions humanity in a more complex and ambiguous relationship with the natural world.

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Richard Skelton is a British musician. Following the death of his wife Louise in 2004, he began to make music as a way of coming to terms with the tragedy.

His music, which uses a number of instruments – principally guitar and violin, has been compared with that of Arvo Pärt among others. His recordings explicitly reference places of emotional resonance, specifically the West Pennine Moors, and the area around the sparsely populated parish of Anglezarke.