The Delicate Shoreline Beckons Us

 

The Delicate Shoreline Beckons Us by Jonathan Wood


At 71 pages (in the paperback edition, at least) this is a slight book, but it is by no means a trifle. The introduction by Mark Valentine is a treat in and of itself, as Valentine's essays usually are. When I finished the essay, I had the impression that I was about to read something along the lines of "Morrisey's 'Every Day is Like Sunday' meets Alan Moore". I was not far off, though I had a more Oscar Wilde sense than Alan Moore. Whatever the comparison, the book works and it works well.

Fans of Wood's prose and poetry will find much to like here. Were I to quote a particularly beautiful selection of prose from the book, I would be quoting the entire book! This does not, however, mean that the voice is delicate (which belies the title). Rather, there is a workman's voice throughout - an intellectual narrator who is steeped in a workman's frame of mind. It makes for a very interesting voice that sometimes shows a crass edge to the smartness, a sort of "knowing" of how the base man lives while delivering that knowledge in some clever turns of phrase:

The landlord is the sort of bloke that likes a crafty half-pint in a pint glass that he hides just under the corner counter next to the old whiskey tumbler with the 'hunting with hounds' coloured transfer on the side of it. The hunstman's head has been worn off by the repetition of the same fat fingers day in and day out, raising the tumbler to the optic of the finest blended and then down again with precision and native speed, to ensure his Missus does not catch him at it too often. There's nothing better than an alcoholic running a pub and using all the camouflage at his disposal so do do and to do it well and with pride. The faded thick cardigan fits him perfectly as he raises his fourth double blended of the day to his lips and down the hatch, evoking all that he could ever want to see from his past as it tumbles like dying gulls into the vortex of the open grave of the rest of his life.

Again, while Wood's depictions of brutal lives hit hard upon the consciousness, the words themselves are gently deceiving. Wood is very sly, surreptitious in his dripping of hints. He is a careful craftsman, just like his narrator. Even the "slips" that the narrator commits as the plot unfolds are intentional, but don't seem intentional on first or even second reading. There is a sleight of hand there, a very pleasant sleight of hand, that sneaks in, ultimately, for the throat. It is an artful strangulation, so well done that one must examine it again and again, like a football player watching film in slow motion to improve his game, in order to catch the moments when the fingers clasp the trachea. Such sweet suffocation!

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