Slow Science Fictions #7: Frederick Burrell Possessed
Posted on August 14, 2007
Refounded Communist Party member Hannah Watts is convinced that Nazi thug George Bridger should have been strangled at birth, but relief teacher Margaret Cooper sits on him anyway and he comes inside her. Meanwhile, Professor David Wilson and son Dylan continue their lustful pursuits of Hannah; new world order capitalism carries on its destructive way; and something shadowy has got into historian, Frederick Burrell…
Once a brilliant scholar, but now jobless, homeless and living amongst an assortment of refugees and asylum seekers as he shifts from Salvation Army hostel to squat, Frederick Burrell has wound up on the 'wrong' side of the global division of rich and poor. It's the society he's compelled to live in, you see: Englishmen like him are ashamed of expressing nationalist pride and sentiments. What has the pursuit of democracy, freedom and prosperity achieved? Muslim settlers and a woman's right to wear the total burqa of Swabiastan, that's what! Is it any wonder Burrell finds himself following prostate-troubled imam Sadar Saddubin into the Gents toilet of the Drum And Billet public house, in his hand a sabre knife from a lost Afghan war, in his head the voice of Sir Michaeal Spearate, Duke of Hell?
A clear-sighted Mike Weller continues to track and backtrack the lives of his disparate group of characters, immersing them in a melting pot of psycho-sexual/political tongue-in-cheekery, emotional repression and demonic pathogens. Though not conducive to building a sense of momentum, the fragmented structure of the narrative remains compelling and agreeably off balancing, and enhances the quirky vitality of a dizzying, brain-adjusting read.
Refounded Communist Party member Hannah Watts is convinced that Nazi thug George Bridger should have been strangled at birth, but relief teacher Margaret Cooper sits on him anyway and he comes inside her. Meanwhile, Professor David Wilson and son Dylan continue their lustful pursuits of Hannah; new world order capitalism carries on its destructive way; and something shadowy has got into historian, Frederick Burrell…
Once a brilliant scholar, but now jobless, homeless and living amongst an assortment of refugees and asylum seekers as he shifts from Salvation Army hostel to squat, Frederick Burrell has wound up on the 'wrong' side of the global division of rich and poor. It's the society he's compelled to live in, you see: Englishmen like him are ashamed of expressing nationalist pride and sentiments. What has the pursuit of democracy, freedom and prosperity achieved? Muslim settlers and a woman's right to wear the total burqa of Swabiastan, that's what! Is it any wonder Burrell finds himself following prostate-troubled imam Sadar Saddubin into the Gents toilet of the Drum And Billet public house, in his hand a sabre knife from a lost Afghan war, in his head the voice of Sir Michaeal Spearate, Duke of Hell?
A clear-sighted Mike Weller continues to track and backtrack the lives of his disparate group of characters, immersing them in a melting pot of psycho-sexual/political tongue-in-cheekery, emotional repression and demonic pathogens. Though not conducive to building a sense of momentum, the fragmented structure of the narrative remains compelling and agreeably off balancing, and enhances the quirky vitality of a dizzying, brain-adjusting read.
32 A5 pages, £2 inc p&p, available from www.homebakedbooks.co.uk