{"id":11925,"date":"2021-02-25T15:29:01","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T14:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11925"},"modified":"2021-02-25T15:29:01","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T14:29:01","slug":"london-gothic-by-nicholas-royle-confingo-press-12-99-reviewed-by-richard-clegg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11925","title":{"rendered":"London Gothic, by Nicholas Royle ( Confingo Press, \u00a312.99), reviewed by Richard Clegg"},"content":{"rendered":"

London Gothic<\/span><\/i> by Nicholas Royle ( Confingo Press, \u00a312.99)<\/span><\/p>\n

As well as a novelist and film aficionado, Nicolas Royle is one of the foremost practitioners of the short story form. As editor\u00a0 and publisher of\u00a0 his own Nightjar publications, he has been a doughty champion of other writers, often well off the beaten track. The most recent chapbooks included Vlatka Horvat\u2019s amazing story <\/span>House Calls <\/span><\/i>which has many of the features of the best Royle stories, the mundane, the disturbing, mixed with astringent comedy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During this year of Covid he has seen several new chapbooks into print, seen the stories of his friend,Joel Lane, that he published with Egerton Press, re-published by one of London\u2019s finest publishers, the Influx Press. He has presented an update of his trawl of second hand bookshops, and has been busy delivering books throughout London and Manchester, usually on foot. A busy year\u00a0 has passed and this doesn\u2019t include his teaching responsibilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

These stories cover the last few years and are full of pleasures. As with the photographs for his Nightjar Press, Royle likes to show buildings that are steeped in shadows or reveal secret histories. Part of a trilogy, London Gothic, to be followed by Manchester and Paris volumes, is steeped in local geography from the deadly Standard Gauge to the aspirational The Old Bakery.<\/span><\/p>\n

My favourite stories are two of the newer ones.<\/span> Constraints<\/span><\/i> follows a walk between two places, the former homes of Giles Gordon and B S Johnson, two writers admired by Royle. This is the world of the new enclosures when public space seems to have evaporated. It reminded me of its opposite, the pastoral-industrial film, Finisterre, which depicts an East End of London where nature survives,if briefly,\u00a0 in the post-industrial gaps of the city. Here the world is enchained, left to the reader to interpret. Read in the context of Johnson\u2019s impending suicide, this is a very dark world of possession, control, and command:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo junk mail. Danger keep out. Speak enter call cancel. No dog fouling. Danger keep out…No dumping. No war on Northern Syria.\u201d\u00a0 Royle\u2019s story leaves us in a No Man\u2019s land of questions where even the origins of the writers and speakers are in doubt.<\/span><\/p>\n

In The Old Bakery<\/em> Royle has much lighter touches, as the copy editor rips to shreds the Sunday supplement pretensions of the DFLs (Down From Londons). Most of the story bounces between the text and the parallel text of the editor as he undermines the text speak nonsense and curated lives of the living dead. It is hard to think of another writer who could use an experimental form in such an accessible way. The phrasing is impeccable, \u201ca live-work space,\u201d \u201canother eBay find, in the form of a 1960s red-and-black leather chequerboard footstool attests to the couple\u2019s love of colour,\u201d and more besides. It would spoil the story\u2019s ending to add more here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Within and beneath the stories there are filmic references\u00a0 to Hitchcock and the darkest noir, the characters have the nimbleness of the fleet-footed author, connecting the apparent to the looming, the actual to the historical. He delights in the humdrum , \u201cthe next office in this warren of tiny spaces and interconnecting staircases with worn lino,\u201d framed by the portentous:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHis first day. They gave him the tour. Three floors at the top of a building on the edge of Covent Garden. Hitchcock had shot scenes from <\/span>Frenzy\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>in a similar building close by, a little over ten years earlier.\u201d This from the second story, <\/span>Inside\/Out.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

And then there is the mastery of voice and point of view. If you like stories that combine cleverness with direction, this collection reads as a masterclass of the form. If the remaining volumes of the trilogy are as exhilarating as this, Royle will have renewed the short story and taken it in novel directions, not for the first time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Richard Clegg<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

London Gothic by Nicholas Royle ( Confingo Press, \u00a312.99) As well as a novelist and film aficionado, Nicolas Royle is one of the foremost practitioners of the short story form. As editor\u00a0 and publisher of\u00a0 his own Nightjar publications, he has been a doughty champion of other writers, often well off the beaten track. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nLondon Gothic, by Nicholas Royle ( Confingo Press, \u00a312.99), reviewed by Richard Clegg - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11925\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"London Gothic, by Nicholas Royle ( Confingo Press, \u00a312.99), reviewed by Richard Clegg - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"London Gothic by Nicholas Royle ( Confingo Press, \u00a312.99) As well as a novelist and film aficionado, Nicolas Royle is one of the foremost practitioners of the short story form. 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