Barking Circus

by Douglas Thompson

In the early days of the 21st century, an ‘Unknown Executive’ is killed by a passing car near Park Circus, the architectural office quarter of Glasgow. From his briefcase spill a series of mysterious and outlandish story fragments which blow across surrounding districts over subsequent days, each found and read by a diverse range of local characters. A far future Britain overtaken by rising sea levels, a near-future Scotland in which a nuclear accident has displaced the lowland populations to new experimental settlements in the north, an America in which NASA has begun a mining colony on a distant planet to the detriment of its hapless alien inhabitants. Each of these narratives do little to help the police establish the dead man ‘s identity, but point instead to a higher reality, a series of metaphorical futures that throw light on the enduring enigmas of human life and love: the struggle for freedom against the forces of tyranny and decay, the adverse effects of social-exclusion at the personal and societal level, and the transformative power of art.

340 pages, Paperback

First published November 10, 2020

About the author

Douglas Thompson's short stories have appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies, most recently Ambit, Postscripts, and New Writing Scotland. He won the Grolsch/Herald Question of Style Award in 1989 and second prize in the Neil Gunn Writing Competition in 2007. His first book, "Ultrameta", was published by Eibonvale Press in August 2009, nominated for the Edge Hill Prize, and shortlisted for the BFS Best Newcomer Award. His critically acclaimed second novel, "Sylvow", was published in autumn 2010, also from Eibonvale. A third novel "Apoidea" was released from The Exaggerated Press in 2011, a fourth "Mechagnosis" is due from Dog Horn in September 2012, and a fifth "Entanglement" is due from Elsewhen Press as an e-book from August 2012, and as a paperback from November 2012,

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review originally published in Black Static magazine:

Douglas Thompson’s “Barking Circus” features stories that impact on the lives of those that read them. In this instance, the origin comes via the windblown contents of a briefcase as a result of a car accident, their author an Unknown Executive, an anonymous “suit and a shirt and a tie with a human being inside them” who lies dead in the road following the collision. These papers form complete stories, read by various members of the public, who find meaning within and then reflect on the correlation with their own lives.

Stories within stories within novels are a major facet of Thompson’s work, to the extent that the line between a collection and a novel might blur. But this is all par for the course in this experimental work, and Thompson’s skill is that he maintains interest across each individual piece as well as the arc of the whole. In some respects, the novel reminded me of James Everington’s “The Quarantined City”, also recently read, where stories can inform directly on reality, and similar to that book a Ballardian zeitgeist hovers over “Barking Circus”. Nina Allan’s insightful afterward considers that Thompson finds the blandness, the literary politeness of much contemporary literature frustrating and therefore sets himself against it. I agree with all of that. Thompson is a literary agitator.

The individual stories feature obscurities such as a plexiglass homunculus, a near future settlement where the inhabitants discover they are part of an experiment, the brother of a deceased artist surprised by his hitherto unrealised backstory, an immortal extraterrestrial watcher of Earth who has been tricked by his superiors, a pope who when presented with fantastic miracles can only denounce them. Surrounding these stories, a firm of architects play out class structures in microcosm, and the city of Glasgow is a story within stories, the past overlapping the present overlapping the future.

There is much in “Barking Circus” about the human condition, about a desire to press for meaning when shouting into the abyss. But despite some egoistic characters, Thompson recognises humanity can spark brightly too: “If we stay around them long enough, people will always astound us sooner or later, with their own personal fragment of the divine, the secret piece of a broken universe that they hide inside themselves. These are the things to hold on to, the things to try to remember about each other, for the rest of our lives, in the face of all the rubbish and tittle-tattle, all the white noise of disinformation.”

“Barking Circus” comes as a beautifully rendered hardback with the text of the strewn stories in red, the remainder in black; each chapter separated with tactile deeper red glossy leaves featuring black and white illustrations by Thompson’s now sadly deceased brother, the artist Ally Thompson. It also comes at a price. However, hopefully Zagava will consider a more affordable paperback in the future – as has happened with Thompson’s equally sumptuous “The Suicide Machine” – as it would be a shame for such a work to reach a limited audience for financial reasons.

Because “Barking Circus” does deserve to be widely read. I’ve seen reviews of Thompson’s work where his style is described as ‘difficult’, but this is only because his stories demand you to make personal connections, they command you to think. It’s perhaps indicative of the state of popular ‘entertainment’ – including works of fiction – when thinking is considered to be difficult, and that is something that we should all worry – or indeed, think – about.

This work uses language in ways over and beyond forcing a plot. This is storytelling at its invigorating, demanding best.

[The Doctor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book #134/176

A beautifully written book with a beautiful message.