Scar City
A new collection from one of the most powerful voices in slipstream and horror writing is a significant event. This collection of twenty two stories was one of the last that Joel Lane put together before his death in 2013. Frequently taking the form of dark urban fantasy, with his home city of Birmingham as their nucleus, these are intense and often painful stories that linger in the mind for a long time.
These stories are populated by troubled people living troubled lives in troubled places. A pervasive melancholia overhangs the tales, and seeps its way into their fabric (in tandem with the copious amounts of alcohol imbibed by their complicated characters trying to make sense of and otherwise cope with their circumstances). These tales, then, wear their scars plainly, and it’s this fragile, fractured quality which imbues them with their beauty. They are difficult stories, but then they have to be, considering their subject matter.
As a reader and as a writer, I’ve always been drawn to the dichotomy of living in a world made of equal parts beauty and tragedy, and how this kind of living affects us. This effect is on display everywhere in these pages. It’s a bittersweet vision to be sure, and an important one that we should not look away from, not ever.
From the foreword by Alexander Zelenyj.
This book also contains a substantial essay by Nina Allan examining Joel Lane’s ‘Blue’ trilogy of novels.
Contents:
- Publisher’s Note and Bibliographic Data
- Foreword by Alexander Zelenyj: Echoes from the Place We Met
- Those Who Remember
- In This Blue Shade
- A Faraway City
- The Willow Pattern
- Echoland
- This Night Last Woman
- Birds of Prey
- The Last Gallery
- Making Babies
- Keep the Night
- My Voice Is Dead
- A Hairline Cut
- The Long Shift
- Internal Colonies
- Among the Leaves
- The Grief of Seagulls
- By Night He Could Not See
- Feels Like Underground (with Chris Morgan)
- Upon a Granite Wind
- Winter Song
- Rituals
- Behind the Curtain
- Essay by Nina Allan: Socialism or Barbarism: Joel Lane’s Blue Trilogy and the Poetry of the Lost
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Joel Lane
Joel Lane (1963–2013) was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, critic and anthology editor. He received the British Fantasy Award twice.
Born in Exeter, he was the nephew of tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott. At the time of his death, Lane lived in south Birmingham, where he worked in health publishing. The latter city frequently provided settings for his fiction.
Although the majority of Lane's short stories can be categorised as horror or dark fantasy, his novels are more overtly mainstream. From Blue to Black (2000) is a portrait of a disturbed rock musician, whilst The Blue Mask (2003) follows the aftermath of a brutal and disfiguring attack.
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