| Synopsis: |
These stories are pictures of contemporary life and primitive longing, peopled by characters who often seem to be moving through interior landscapes. 'It is too easy to call it escape,' the narrator of ARID says, imagining places, 'where all moons are new moons, and I might learn to live somehow differently.' From the boy-meets-girl love story of AFTER THE FILM to MEDICINE's Edgar Allan Poe-like confrontation with madness, Cameron's strong poetic vision is evident. Sensitive and touching portraits of childhood, such as PEACHES AND MONKEYS' TAILS are set against the backdrops of an Edinburgh cafe, a young offenders' institute and a new-town's ancient glen, which in this collection is East Kilbride, the chief setting of ROUSSEAU MOON, the novella at the heart of the work. A teenage boy struggles with the memory of his dead father ...dreams, drugs, surrealism, the occult, intense friendship ...he explores all of these until he is overwhelmed by a genuine 'recovered memory, one that is both painful and cathartic. Lyrical, intense, foreboding ...this is a remarkable first collection of new fiction writing by one of Scotland's emerging young writers.The contents are: Peaches and Monkeys' Tails, Medicine, Sam and Step, The Mirror, Jeremy's Home, Excursion, Arid, Then Mona Says, Devotion, Retro, Jack's Version, After The Film, The Prince and the novella, Rousseau Moon. |