Anarchipelago: A Short Story

by Jay Griffiths

A sharp green tale from the award-winning author of Pip A Sideways Look at Time and An Elemental Journey. “Boiling hot day, McTypical McSuburb, McTypical McSunday. I’m watching the neighbours, going into their gardens to mow the litter... YA BASTARDOS! VIVA LA--THIS-FOR-A-LIFADISTAS...” So begins a young man’s search for freedom, leaving the confines of Wimbly and finding himself living in a treehouse, a partner in grime with the road protesters of Newbury.

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Jay Griffiths was born in Manchester and studied English Literature at Oxford University. She spent a couple of years living in a shed on the outskirts of Epping Forest and has travelled the world, but for many years she has been based in Wales.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) Griffiths wrote her impish story of Newbury Bypass resistance in response to her time among the protesters’ encampments and treehouses. Young Roddy finds a purpose for his rebellious attitude wider than his “McTypical McSuburb” by joining other oddballs in solidarity against aggressive policemen and detectives. There are echoes of Ali Smith in the wordplay and rendering of accents: “When I think of the road, I think of more and more monoculture of more and more suburbia. What I do, I do in defiance of the Louis Queasy Chintzy, the sickly stale air of suburban car culture. I want the fresh air of nature, the lifefull wind of the French revolution.”

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Shane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jay Griffiths' short story about active environmental protest is brilliantly immediate and delivered almost as a call to action. It centres around a protest group trying to block the removal of trees for the building of a motorway in England.

This is a short story executed with brilliant voice (from humour to tension) that pulses with the complexity and contradiction of living in a western country today. In a mere 58 pages, Anarchipelago translates the 21st Century existential crisis into something tangible in a way few scientists or authors could.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wild and wonderful. Griffiths articulates what modernity is missing, imprisoned in bland consumer culture, cut off from natural processes. And she writes like Shakespeare, mustering back-alley meaning from a gang of unruly words. She remembers how to tap into their magic and uses them to cultivate mischief.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

she tackles the story of an english anti-motorway movement (up in the trees, no less) - including its moments of peacefulness and quiet frustration - with an immediacy too much prose lacks. really enjoyed this.