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The Peninsula
The Revenants
“In the settlement of Death, the corpse isn’t buried for some time as the body artist needs to mould it for the mourning display […] Rarely acknowledged is how closely a coffin maker must follow the work of the embalming artist. Once the presentable corpse is fixed, the body cannot be returned to the usual mind-me-tits pose of a regular burial (not that anyone in Death would desire anything so missionary), and so the coffin is never the traditional shape.
One recent funeral was remarkable. Eavan Dermoût in death eschewed the traditional horror motif and elected for a perfect foetal shape for her last journey. They’d to break her bones to get her in position, but in the end she rested upright like a wheel, naked and hairless. Behind her the coffin was almost circular, like a coracle with a pot lid—.”
The Revenants is a return to the “eerie mental eavesdropping” of The Settlements, and although not in any way a sequel, the new book listens to the voices of the peninsula, following meandering tales according to a dream logic and endlessly inventive—
One recent funeral was remarkable. Eavan Dermoût in death eschewed the traditional horror motif and elected for a perfect foetal shape for her last journey. They’d to break her bones to get her in position, but in the end she rested upright like a wheel, naked and hairless. Behind her the coffin was almost circular, like a coracle with a pot lid—.”
The Revenants is a return to the “eerie mental eavesdropping” of The Settlements, and although not in any way a sequel, the new book listens to the voices of the peninsula, following meandering tales according to a dream logic and endlessly inventive—
- GenresFiction
228 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2022
30 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 4, 2022
Just like the previous book by the Omissioner Jamie Walsh, The Settlements, this book was an amazing journey with a fantastic ending. I really hope for a third book by the Omissioner.
March 28, 2022
Fragments against our comfort. I'd suggest taking this book slowly. I read the first third or so quickly, the way I would tackle a novel, and I missed things. Reading three or four "chapters" a day, the incremental effect is much stronger and the threads of meaning less tangled.
This is not straightforward narrative fiction -- closer really to Expressionist texts from the 20s, with a dash of Symbolist prose. Some of the chapters are excellent taken as conventual short stories, while others are like side trips that point you toward the exit (or elsewhere in the peninsular maze) without really telling you much that you may recognize as meaningful. Until later, that is, when it may well be too late.
Not for everyone, but I think that's the point.
This is not straightforward narrative fiction -- closer really to Expressionist texts from the 20s, with a dash of Symbolist prose. Some of the chapters are excellent taken as conventual short stories, while others are like side trips that point you toward the exit (or elsewhere in the peninsular maze) without really telling you much that you may recognize as meaningful. Until later, that is, when it may well be too late.
Not for everyone, but I think that's the point.
March 20, 2022
This is the second visit to the Peninsular settlements as seen through the eyes of the ‘Ommisioner’, the (sort of) spiritual councillor, met in the earlier book ‘The Settlements. You might wish to read my earlier commentary on that book to get a greater sense of this volume, but in brief, the Peninsular is a very odd place - a sort of insular, surreal folk-horror location.
Once again, the book is laid out something like a diary with various meetings with odd people in strange places and a sort of ongoing plot which involves characters met in the previous book such as the puppeteer Petulino (his girlfriend), a woman called Haruka and the sinister doctor Kreb who is now an inmate of an asylum. He is part of a group called the Revenants, a group of silent damaged individuals who move as a group and spend their time making arrangements of bones (large to small) which may be either ritual or a means of communication, or both. It is Haruka’s and the Ommisioner’s investigation of the Revenants that is one of the themes of the book.
However, this is not a ‘straightforward’ read in that the book consists of extremely short chapters most of which are only a few pages long. Some have no relationship to the plot per se but which serve to evoke the genus loci of the territory we are projected into so, for example, we have sections about ‘Chiromancers’ Royale’ who read nails, knuckles, hairiness and fingerprints as well as palms, custom internments where the body is sculpted to achieve the desired (usual morbid) effect, a finely balanced tea shop shaped like an egg and perched in a tree, a school teacher who develops techniques to maliciously fart at a child he doesn’t like, hallucinogenic lemons, spectral foxes, snatches of poetry, puppet shows and an odd wedding. Some of these things refer to other Broodcomb books or authors but I should emphasise that it is not necessary to have read them, although obviously doing so would have a re-enforcing effect on the narrative.
The author is playing a lot of (knowing) games here. Not just in the books' surrealist style of non-sequitur cut-up narrative but in the very construction of that narrative which owes something to OuLiPo in that it is written in sequence, each section finalised on the day of its creation, no part is longer than two pages and it was written in notebooks of scrap paper.
Now, should I care about this? Of course, I shouldn’t. All I ask from any text I read is that it is genius so the method does not/should not bother me in the slightest. But the fact the author feels the need to say how it is constructed detracts from my enjoyment of the book somewhat as it raises the thought that its construction is partly ‘an exercise’. This is my main problem with OuLiPo in general - it's clever, but is it brilliant and clever? Also, I am generally not a fan of short chapters, the ‘flash fiction’ I have read has done little for me thus far, so knowing there was a two-page ‘limit’ got me thinking “why constrain yourself? You go for it if you want to, mate!”
Don’t get me wrong here. I really liked this book. I liked its sustained weirdness, its odd characters and its flights of fancy but I felt ‘more’ would be better and its fragmentary nature made it a bit of a tougher read than ‘The Settlements’. I can still recommend this book as I have recommended any of the Broodcomb releases thus far. The most interesting new publisher out there I’m aware of at present.
Once again, the book is laid out something like a diary with various meetings with odd people in strange places and a sort of ongoing plot which involves characters met in the previous book such as the puppeteer Petulino (his girlfriend), a woman called Haruka and the sinister doctor Kreb who is now an inmate of an asylum. He is part of a group called the Revenants, a group of silent damaged individuals who move as a group and spend their time making arrangements of bones (large to small) which may be either ritual or a means of communication, or both. It is Haruka’s and the Ommisioner’s investigation of the Revenants that is one of the themes of the book.
However, this is not a ‘straightforward’ read in that the book consists of extremely short chapters most of which are only a few pages long. Some have no relationship to the plot per se but which serve to evoke the genus loci of the territory we are projected into so, for example, we have sections about ‘Chiromancers’ Royale’ who read nails, knuckles, hairiness and fingerprints as well as palms, custom internments where the body is sculpted to achieve the desired (usual morbid) effect, a finely balanced tea shop shaped like an egg and perched in a tree, a school teacher who develops techniques to maliciously fart at a child he doesn’t like, hallucinogenic lemons, spectral foxes, snatches of poetry, puppet shows and an odd wedding. Some of these things refer to other Broodcomb books or authors but I should emphasise that it is not necessary to have read them, although obviously doing so would have a re-enforcing effect on the narrative.
The author is playing a lot of (knowing) games here. Not just in the books' surrealist style of non-sequitur cut-up narrative but in the very construction of that narrative which owes something to OuLiPo in that it is written in sequence, each section finalised on the day of its creation, no part is longer than two pages and it was written in notebooks of scrap paper.
Now, should I care about this? Of course, I shouldn’t. All I ask from any text I read is that it is genius so the method does not/should not bother me in the slightest. But the fact the author feels the need to say how it is constructed detracts from my enjoyment of the book somewhat as it raises the thought that its construction is partly ‘an exercise’. This is my main problem with OuLiPo in general - it's clever, but is it brilliant and clever? Also, I am generally not a fan of short chapters, the ‘flash fiction’ I have read has done little for me thus far, so knowing there was a two-page ‘limit’ got me thinking “why constrain yourself? You go for it if you want to, mate!”
Don’t get me wrong here. I really liked this book. I liked its sustained weirdness, its odd characters and its flights of fancy but I felt ‘more’ would be better and its fragmentary nature made it a bit of a tougher read than ‘The Settlements’. I can still recommend this book as I have recommended any of the Broodcomb releases thus far. The most interesting new publisher out there I’m aware of at present.
August 3, 2022
Walsh, O. Jamie - The Revenants
For those who have read Edita Bikker’s The Night Of Turns (also from Broodcomb), this collection makes an ideal companion, especially for those who wondered what “the settlements” were that Bikker left.
This reads like a newcomer’s guide. Meeting inhabitants, seeing and perhaps guessing how the society works. There are a variety of characters, several we drift back to repeatedly, others are chance encounters.
Bikker is referenced once in an unsent letter. There is an offhand comment about Potter’s Museum (which brought a smile, recalling a visit to that museum of curiosities decades earlier, along with Arundel Castle and cream pie at Knolly’s).
Each entry is brief, never more than two pages, and I would calculate there are 100+ in this generous collection.
This is a book to be read in small doses, not to wolf down, but to allow impressions to steep into you.
At the fringe is a group of individuals who had ventured outside the settlements on a search-rescue expedition. When they returned, they were profoundly altered. Unable or unwilling to communicate, they live apart, and they live – perhaps – out of time. Locals call them the revenants.
Late events rise to a crescendo, although readers who long for meaning to be folded into mystery may be stymied. We are permitted so much, yet we remain observers, outsiders.
Several of the main actors have a hunger, a thirst for experiencing, or simply “seeing.” Experiences are often transactions. Something gained, another thing lost. The bartered exchange is frequently bitter, yet the longer one lives, the more one grasps that there is no going back, only looking back.
For those who have read Edita Bikker’s The Night Of Turns (also from Broodcomb), this collection makes an ideal companion, especially for those who wondered what “the settlements” were that Bikker left.
This reads like a newcomer’s guide. Meeting inhabitants, seeing and perhaps guessing how the society works. There are a variety of characters, several we drift back to repeatedly, others are chance encounters.
Bikker is referenced once in an unsent letter. There is an offhand comment about Potter’s Museum (which brought a smile, recalling a visit to that museum of curiosities decades earlier, along with Arundel Castle and cream pie at Knolly’s).
Each entry is brief, never more than two pages, and I would calculate there are 100+ in this generous collection.
This is a book to be read in small doses, not to wolf down, but to allow impressions to steep into you.
At the fringe is a group of individuals who had ventured outside the settlements on a search-rescue expedition. When they returned, they were profoundly altered. Unable or unwilling to communicate, they live apart, and they live – perhaps – out of time. Locals call them the revenants.
Late events rise to a crescendo, although readers who long for meaning to be folded into mystery may be stymied. We are permitted so much, yet we remain observers, outsiders.
Several of the main actors have a hunger, a thirst for experiencing, or simply “seeing.” Experiences are often transactions. Something gained, another thing lost. The bartered exchange is frequently bitter, yet the longer one lives, the more one grasps that there is no going back, only looking back.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews