Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been following John Irving’s work for many years now – most people would know him as the author of The World According to Garp or A Prayer for Owen Meaney or perhaps for winning the Oscar for best adapted screenplay for The Cider House Rules (adapted from his own book). I even wrote part of my thesis about his work.

Irving takes his time over new books – three, four, five, six years – so a new one is a treat. Last Night in Twisted River came out last year in hardback, but only recently in paperback. Told with Irving’s usual wry eye and laconic humour, it’s the story of a father and son on the run over several decades. While plot is perhaps very central to the book, for me it’s Irving’s style – his pacing, his deft use of language, his ability to write less than linearly yet still build the book cohesively. My one quibble is the number of typos – as if someone hasn’t even proofread the OCR file before publishing: things like “betwcen” or “Afer” (for “After”) – not a lot, but enough to bump me from the story for a second. Filled with moments of tragedy and moments of laugh out loud humour, this is a book to savour.

Bizarre confusion for a contradictory world

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

Usually I don’t have my cellphone with me when I’m out walking or jogging. On one strange morning, however I did (that’s another long story). Anyway, startled by a sign I took this photo:



So, crossing the road to use the other side, I found this:

It doesn’t make too much sense to me (I’m sure a robot would expend its batteries crossing back and forth). I guess in some kind of bizarre logic it works – really it was only a short section of the footpath on each side closed, but it did appeal to my sense of humour.

Stockfinster: All Becomes Music

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment


Sutemos is a Lithuanian netlabel, releasing a variety of music, but specialising in electronica. A good introduction would be any of their Intelligent Toys compilations – the latest is “We Make Music” – described as “Style: Ambient/ IDM/ Experimental/ Instrumental/ Techno”. 51 tracks, divided into three “CD”s. You can stream any of the music from the website.

Lately I’ve been listening to the 2005 10-track release by Stockfinster – All Becomes Music. Unusually for me – with music to write to – this has vocals, especially the haunting title track, where the build is gradual, the voice-over eerie and refreshing. You can both stream and download the release for free. The release (as with other Sutemos releases) comes with a cool rotating gallery of photographs – example at left.

Ganglion Trains – new sci-fi at The Fringe Magazine

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

This is another odd piece – not set in any previous universe, but perhaps in something I’d like to explore more. What if there was an analogue transport network, linked like the synapses in the brain, and spanning the globe, making transport quicker the way jet planes altered the way we travel? Ganglion Trains is my little caper story where I begin having fun in this concept.

Thanks to Scott at The Fringe for taking this story, quirky as it is.

Hard Suit Lock – hard sci-fi in Planet Magazine

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

With a cool little illustration by Romeo Esparrago, my short piece Hard Suit Lock is out now in Planet Magazine. Hard-shell space suits (see Wikipedia note on the suits here) have advocates, versus typical NASA fabric suits, for various reasons, but ultimatly soft-suits have won out. There’s something a little more fifties sci-fi about the hard suits: think of those old covers of pulp magazines from the fifties with people in suits like armour. Similar, perhaps, to the deep sea diving suits, but slimmer. Apparently NASA is working on a variety of semi-hard suits – see their page here, but these are different to the suit Andreas locks up in the story.

And, this is another story featuring my character Bayliss, who’s also appeared in How Things Fall, Redcord Macro-Nano Engine in Error State and Xuento (in Kings of the Realm).

Nancy Pickard – The Scent of Rain and Lightning

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Well, it’s not an Arizona novel, but Kansas feels near enough – certainly in terms of ranching and wide open landscapes, so for me that’s a big part of the appeal of Nancy Pickard‘s novel. Similar to Ray Robinson’s Forgetting Zoë, which I reviewed a few posts back – note even the similarity of the covers (though this is the UK cover – the edition I read – the US cover is slightly different).

And as with Robinson’s book The Scent of Rain and Lightning involves a crime, and the solving of that crime. Structurally the book is unusual, and challenging – opening in the present time, with the memory of the murder and some sudden changes coming from that – then dropping back to a time shortly before the original crime, in what it would appear to be a quick flashback that gradually becomes the main part of the novel.

With rising tension – we know the crime is coming – Pickard expertly delays and delays, delving into the family and their situation, making the murder almost inevitable. When, far into the novel, we’re returned to the present time, those sudden changes – the release of murderer from jail – take on a whole new context, and give the story a whole different, though inevitable direction. The ending is unexpected, the story-telling tight and fast, the atmosphere evocative.

This book is perhaps more in the realm of crime writing than Robinson’s, though both bear similarities. It is an engaging, tight read, and I’ll be looking for more of Pickard’s books.