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Manchester Uncanny
Nicholas Royle’s fifth short story collection, Manchester Uncanny investigates the strange ways of the ‘original modern city’. Haunted by the ghosts of Ian Curtis and James Anderton as much as by its own pre-bomb sooty demeanour, Manchester today is a city of shiny surfaces that may or may not offer a true reflection of who we are – or who, in a world increasingly in thrall to identity politics, we think we are.
‘Royle is a master of the uncanny’Manchester Review of Books
Sixteen stories from the last two decades, including three brand-new pieces, demonstrate Royle’s range of voice and approach, from accessible experimentation – a story designed to be read in any one of 362,880 ways, another made exclusively out of the lyrics to Unknown Pleasures – to more conventional but equally dark narratives of snooker halls, secret pools, university life and ‘people texture’.
Manchester Uncanny is the second in a series of city-based short story collections by Nicholas Royle. London Gothic was the first. The third and final volume will be devoted to Paris.
‘Royle is a master of the uncanny’Manchester Review of Books
Sixteen stories from the last two decades, including three brand-new pieces, demonstrate Royle’s range of voice and approach, from accessible experimentation – a story designed to be read in any one of 362,880 ways, another made exclusively out of the lyrics to Unknown Pleasures – to more conventional but equally dark narratives of snooker halls, secret pools, university life and ‘people texture’.
Manchester Uncanny is the second in a series of city-based short story collections by Nicholas Royle. London Gothic was the first. The third and final volume will be devoted to Paris.
192 pages, Paperback
Published November 29, 2022
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About the author
Nicholas Royle
179 books56 followersNicholas Royle is an English writer. He is the author of seven novels, two novellas and a short story collection. He has edited sixteen anthologies of short stories. A senior lecturer in creative writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, he also runs Nightjar Press, publishing original short stories as signed, limited-edition chapbooks. He works as a fiction reviewer for The Independent and the Warwick Review and as an editor for Salt Publishing.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 18, 2024
I just couldn’t put this down. I read the whole thing across a single evening. Like its predecessor London Gothic, this is a disorientating, animate book, full of stories that both unnerve and amuse. The opener, ‘Welcome Back’, is a perfect case in point: it delves into academic office politics, with the narrator getting tangled up in accusations of bias when a colleague resigns. But believe me when I say you will never guess the twist. In ‘Simister’, a man’s attempt to do good deeds turns into a macabre comedy of errors. There are also some cool narrative experiments here, like ‘Disorder’, made up entirely of Joy Division lyrics, and ‘Strange Times’, which (seemingly) collects messages highlighting the homogeneity of language used to address the Covid-19 pandemic, the way phrases spread like... a virus, I suppose.
It’s the longer stories I really enjoyed, though. In ‘The Child’, a man is led on a strange journey after he visits a mysterious video shop. I always adore a lost film story, and this one is so gripping, so rich, I was ready to read it for hundreds of pages more. ‘Someone Take These Dreams Away’ is also a film story of sorts, a more haunting one, framing the experiences of its characters through described visuals from if.... ‘Zulu Pond’ has the most unpromising start (man moves back to Manchester, dwells on the memory of a girl he met for one night years ago), yet it unfolds into a brilliant exploration of the city’s waterlogged edgelands. In ‘The Apartment’, perhaps the most uncanny of the stories, the narrator hears voices above his top-floor flat and finds himself between reality and the ‘people texture’ of an architect’s rendering.
As with Daniel Carpenter’s recent collection Hunting by the River, having lived in Manchester undeniably added to the appeal of the stories for me – but that’s just a nice extra; Royle’s visions of the uncanny are incredibly compelling. I’m looking forward to the final volume of his city-based trilogy, which will be about Paris.
It’s the longer stories I really enjoyed, though. In ‘The Child’, a man is led on a strange journey after he visits a mysterious video shop. I always adore a lost film story, and this one is so gripping, so rich, I was ready to read it for hundreds of pages more. ‘Someone Take These Dreams Away’ is also a film story of sorts, a more haunting one, framing the experiences of its characters through described visuals from if.... ‘Zulu Pond’ has the most unpromising start (man moves back to Manchester, dwells on the memory of a girl he met for one night years ago), yet it unfolds into a brilliant exploration of the city’s waterlogged edgelands. In ‘The Apartment’, perhaps the most uncanny of the stories, the narrator hears voices above his top-floor flat and finds himself between reality and the ‘people texture’ of an architect’s rendering.
As with Daniel Carpenter’s recent collection Hunting by the River, having lived in Manchester undeniably added to the appeal of the stories for me – but that’s just a nice extra; Royle’s visions of the uncanny are incredibly compelling. I’m looking forward to the final volume of his city-based trilogy, which will be about Paris.
December 30, 2022
Manchester Uncanny (Confingo Publishing) is the fifth short story collection by Nicholas Royle, covering tales written between 2003 and 2022, including three original ones. The book design and contents act as a counterpoint to London Gothic from the same publisher (with a promised Paris version forthcoming). These stories deal with the place of Royle's upbringing, with its industrial haze and rich cultural history acting as touchstones to the themes that shape the prose. These streets are haunted by the spectres of Shipman, Brady and Hindley, populated by damaged characters dealing with broken relationships, facing sinister depictions of darkness and isolation. Real-life figures are mentioned - Ian Curtis, James Anderton. Royle's unique voice shines through in all the stories, even the more experimental ones like Disorder (utilising only the lyrics from Joy Division's 1979 album Unknown Pleasures), The Dark Heart (in which the nine sections that comprise the story can be read in any order) and Strange Times, which is made up of messages presumably sent and/or received during the Covid pandemic which reflect the - well - strange time that we endured.
My favourites include The Child, in which the narrator returns to Manchester after spending years away, only to come across a DVD of a dodgy film confiscated by the police in the 1970s. There's a powerful sense of nostalgia and regret in Nothing Else Matters. Salt has a delightful sense of foreboding as a student visits the all-too-quiet home of a tutor in an effort to discuss some coursework. In Someone Take These Dreams Away our narrator's concern over an old school friend begins to intrude into his obsession for late 60s British films. In The Apartment a single man living alone hears voices coming from the apartment above; the puzzling aspect is that he lives on the top floor of the block. Simister tells the story of recently separated Adam, whose responsibilities in caring for an elderly neighbour take on startling consequences. In Safe a young woman buys a flat containing a mysterious item left by the previous owner (this one has a delicious final line). Zulu Pond was originally published as Alsiso and also concerns a man returning to his childhood haunts after spending years away, only this one involves a secret fishing location and some dark thoughts that plague the central character's mind. Zulu Pond happens to be one of the best stories I've read in years.
Nicholas Royle's fiction tends to touch on themes and motifs that absolutely chime with me as a reader - identity, memory, regret, dreams, coincidences, repetition. He's the master at subtlety. Sometimes the hints and clues are so subtle I have to reread the story to pick up on these indicators. He has a unique way of blurring the line between something being autobiographical and something being fictional. He draws you in. I suppose it's as much about what he leaves out of the prose as what he puts in that makes it so impactful. He doesn't pander to the reader, his fiction is sometimes ambiguous, often numinous, always rewarding. There is also a great deal of humour there. This latest collection is as good as anything he's written. It comes highly recommended.
My favourites include The Child, in which the narrator returns to Manchester after spending years away, only to come across a DVD of a dodgy film confiscated by the police in the 1970s. There's a powerful sense of nostalgia and regret in Nothing Else Matters. Salt has a delightful sense of foreboding as a student visits the all-too-quiet home of a tutor in an effort to discuss some coursework. In Someone Take These Dreams Away our narrator's concern over an old school friend begins to intrude into his obsession for late 60s British films. In The Apartment a single man living alone hears voices coming from the apartment above; the puzzling aspect is that he lives on the top floor of the block. Simister tells the story of recently separated Adam, whose responsibilities in caring for an elderly neighbour take on startling consequences. In Safe a young woman buys a flat containing a mysterious item left by the previous owner (this one has a delicious final line). Zulu Pond was originally published as Alsiso and also concerns a man returning to his childhood haunts after spending years away, only this one involves a secret fishing location and some dark thoughts that plague the central character's mind. Zulu Pond happens to be one of the best stories I've read in years.
Nicholas Royle's fiction tends to touch on themes and motifs that absolutely chime with me as a reader - identity, memory, regret, dreams, coincidences, repetition. He's the master at subtlety. Sometimes the hints and clues are so subtle I have to reread the story to pick up on these indicators. He has a unique way of blurring the line between something being autobiographical and something being fictional. He draws you in. I suppose it's as much about what he leaves out of the prose as what he puts in that makes it so impactful. He doesn't pander to the reader, his fiction is sometimes ambiguous, often numinous, always rewarding. There is also a great deal of humour there. This latest collection is as good as anything he's written. It comes highly recommended.
May 16, 2023
"Manchester Uncanny" is the second of three books collating short stories by Nicholas Royle centered around their respective cities (the others being "London Gothic" and an as yet unpublished Paris collection). Royle is very precise when it comes to describing locations, so there is an eager sense of place here quite distinct from what might be regarded as tourist spots. These are the urban trails, the roads between places, the otherwise nondescript buildings. The writing style can be quite dry, most stories slowly accreting details in a cumulative effect to create a mood rather than might be considered a plot. Not that there aren't plots.
My favourite stories here were "Welcome Back", "The Child", "The Lancashire Fusilier" (a short short which packs a big punch), and "Zulu Pond" (which proves just as effective and slippery with meaning as it did when I first read it almost 20 years ago). "The Dark Heart" contains nine sections which can be read in a random order and the order here was created randomly. I didn't know this when I read it, but upon revisiting it I can see how permutations would benefit multiple re-readings. "The Apartment" feels like a slipstream segue into Royle's non-fiction book, "White Spines".
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this but not quite so much as "London Gothic" for some reason. I rated that 4 stars but this is much more deserving than 3 stars; so in my head it's 3.6 (I prefer to round up rather than down).
My favourite stories here were "Welcome Back", "The Child", "The Lancashire Fusilier" (a short short which packs a big punch), and "Zulu Pond" (which proves just as effective and slippery with meaning as it did when I first read it almost 20 years ago). "The Dark Heart" contains nine sections which can be read in a random order and the order here was created randomly. I didn't know this when I read it, but upon revisiting it I can see how permutations would benefit multiple re-readings. "The Apartment" feels like a slipstream segue into Royle's non-fiction book, "White Spines".
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this but not quite so much as "London Gothic" for some reason. I rated that 4 stars but this is much more deserving than 3 stars; so in my head it's 3.6 (I prefer to round up rather than down).
April 13, 2024
Wonderful, dark and uncanny! Great!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews