Lantern Lecture and Other Stories

Lantern Lecture is a stunning debut by a young British writer of extraordinary gifts. Each of the three stories in this collection is a virtuoso performance, a juggling of unlikely subjects and unusual styles that dazzles the reader with the effortless mastery of both tone and content. The stories concern people who are so far from the centre of things that they have to invent the world as they go along (an eccentric, a criminal) and also people (a judge, a Queen) who are so deeply identified with an institution that they somehow cease to exist.

But subject matter is only the beginning. The magical transformation of factual material into something sheerly imaginative is one to the hallmarks of the writing. So Lantern Lecture makes of a chaotic true romance an intricate construction that is, for all its brevity and symmetry, almost a transistorised novel. Hoosh-mi, by contract subjects the idea of royalty to a whirlwind of subversive devices. It is an outrageous satire, but is also exhibits a sneaking fondness for its subject. It is a watercolour as well as a cartoon.

The longest story, Bathpool Park, is closely based on a famous criminal trial. It sets out to be faithful to the facts, but free in its interpretation. Although the story’s starting point is a sensational case, it moves the reader towards a state of mind inaccessible to journalism. Slice by slice, Bathpool Park analyses not only the British legal system, but the other other agents (press, police) which co-operate with it but need not share its priorities. And when elements are reassembled, everything looks a little different.