Yet Another Three Reviews

The now customary triliogy (as I used to put it) of InMadrid-aimed book reviews – recorded here for posterity in order of appreciation by me. The last such set for the time being – life is too busy to spend on something so trivial as high literature…

A Void (La Disparition)

This significant book (its linguistically cunning author calling for no introduction) strains against a troublingly unjust handicap… in fact, two. It informs of a tall story, that of Anton Vowl, a similar champion of virtuoso wordplay who is lost to a churning, sorrowful world without warning, thus provoking a fatal inquiry amongst bosom companions and distant contacts both, all of whom follow suit in shrugging off this mortal coil by turns – but within this account of bodily vanishings lurks a vast conundrum of non-inclusion, a puzzling confrontation orbiting around a pivotal lack so mammoth, so voluminous in its span as to thwart plausibility, whilst still so small as to prohibit our noticing it at all.

Q – “do what is possible, and then move on”

Almost blindly.

What I have to do.

Screams in my ears already bursting from cannon fire, bodies crashing into me. My throat choked with bloody, sweaty dust, my coughs tearing me apart.
Terror on the faces of the fleeing people. Bandaged heads, crushed limbs . . . I’m constantly turning around: Elias is behind me. Huge, pushing his way through the crowd. He has Magister Thomas over his shoulders, lifeless.

Where is the omnipresent Lord? His flock is being slaughtered.