Set against the backdrop of life in the Welsh valleys, Granellis edgy novel delves into addiction and the psychotic mind and leaves the reader reeling.
James Read is a troubled man in his forties. A gambling addiction has destroyed his life, career and marriage. After a period living on the streets he ends up in a hostel, where he meets Colin, a Falklands war veteran with schizophrenia.
The novel is played out against the backdrop of Colins crazed mind and insane plans. As James life begins to recover, so the danger that Colin represents begins to escalate. Colin becomes James nemesis and pushes him toward the limit of endurance. The novel concludes in climactic and dramatic fashion.
James was a long time waking. Invisible hands held him, and he was being shaken. He thought an earthquake was taking place. Hed been in one, once. It had taken three days for his brain to realise the ground was no longer moving under him, a week for it to transmit that message to his legs. Today it took him just a few minutes to know that this was him writhing around, sheets throttled in his hands like so many necks, his unsteady bed made more so by his turning body.
James blinked his eyes in an attempt to still the thoughts that were springing back into action. Hed often tried to deny his existence in a dream but it was no good. It never was.
Light. It streamed in through the window to assault him. Hed forgotten to close the blind, again. It formed dappled patterns in his shabby room, picking out the spare, worn furniture, and making early morning dust dance. He struggled to free himself from the bed, got up shakily and lent against the window-sill. As he rubbed at his eyes and looked out, the dawn landscape was also lit up by the coldest and whitest of light. Brown hillside seemed to be coming to meet him in a featureless landslide, above it a blank sky framed the blind valley in its bare winter coat. James shivered in the T-shirt and shorts hed had on for three days, put all his despair into one long sigh, and got back into his narrow bed.
James knew he was close to the end of things, one way or another. Each click of the wheel in his head told him this, but it did not want to let him go. Recently hed found out that some called it the wheel of misfortune. Hed been too low to laugh, roulette had been his favourite from the outset, a deadly mistress. Now it lay like a cancer at the heart of his weakness, biting into him steadily. There was a supporting cast, cards, horses, dogs and any sport he could bet on, some of which hed never even seen played.
Una Metamorfosis Irani
Sundome 03