Wan and Watchman
2021
THIS MUST BE EARTH by Melissa Wan
COCKY WATCHMAN by Ailsa Cox
My previous reviews of NIGHTJAR PRESS: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/tag/nightjar-press/
When I read these works, my thoughts will appear in the comment stream below…
THIS MUST BE EARTH by Melissa Wan
“, a woman too big and somehow too dark to be Grace, who had always been pale and slight.”
A wan Moon, ironically, for the Grace of God, has slipped its tether and become a pencil sharpener or a drawing of a UFO or something or someone else altogether? This is a compelling, if discomfiting, piece wherein off-duty taxi driver George picks his daughter up at the train station for Christmas when more than just the Bethlehem Star has vanished from our dark horizons…
The out-of-kilter sense of this work as we progress with more and more knowledge of George’s backstory, a watchman in a vigil thus to protect the night sky, in a long line of such watchmen on the spear side of his family if not the distaff, and actually he was born on a notable space exploration date in 1959, and we are also granted inside knowledge revealed for us about his own habits and secret salacious thoughts, and his sneakiness in not being observed by his wife (and I use the word ‘observe’ advisedly), and a gradual inexplicable entropy of expectations in his self worth seems to pan out. This work even causes an accretive lack of confidence by the reader in their own sanctity of self, I sensed, especially in the ability to clinch a bargain with this story and how it does actually end and why — indeed, why do major things go missing or are misunderstood and not recognised, and, just as one example, why was it George chose Mark Murphy and not Herbie Mann when planning the music to play in his unflagged taxi for when his daughter from university got into it after his meeting her train, while, perhaps significantly, thus off-duty….
Our co-vivid dream for today?
“Most people seemed only too keen to herald the end of the world.”
My previous review of this author: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2019/07/17/best-british-short-stories-2019/#comment-16525
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“Cajun moon
Where does your power lie
As you move
Across the southern sky
You took my babe
Way too soon
What have you done
Cajun moon”
Herbie Mann music