Unifying the influences of English supernatural tale and the micro-observations of the Japanese I-novel, and combining them with a trainspotterish psychogeography, Quentin S. Crisp brings you a monochrome novella that is either a paean to or a polemic against the drabness of quotidian Britain – his dreariest yet.
It’s 2013. Pop culture is dead. With human activity increasingly ‘updated’ to digital conformity, community is on the verge of extinction, and a weary, soulless, 21st century Britain is about to endure a phase of austerity imposed from above. As gentrification continues in London, a pitifully obscure writer is squeezed to the very outskirts of the city. At an ebb, he applies for housing benefit, stunned by depression and lost in the shuffling labyrinth of his internal monologue, tripping over the untied shoelaces of his mind.
