Lloyd Markham (Parthian Books)
An absurdist novella that follows a group of oddball friends, in a town that doesn’t exist. Cassandra, the main focus of the story, is utterly convinced that she is from space and is waiting for her alien parents to find her.
Cass is only ever seen wearing her spacesuit, which she keeps on in case her parents find her. Although she bought the film set prop online, that doesn’t stop her from believing that she is actually an alien stuck in a human’s body.
At first the story is hard to follow. The strange nature of Cassandra’s mind makes it difficult to understand what perspective she is looking through; is she in space looking at earth, or an alien on earth that needs her spacesuit to breathe our air, or just an actual human with an odd view of the world?
All this ambiguity at the beginning of the novella focuses the reader into a new and more open way of looking at Cass’s world. And so, after that initial confusing period, the story pulls you into its wicked and weird tales. The style is similar to The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka; where the everyday meets the strange creating a sense of unfamiliar, familiarity.
Lloyd Markham manages to discuss multiple controversial topics without forcing the message onto the reader at the cost of the plot. Topics like asexuality, racism, millennial job crisis, mental health service, drugs, alcohol, assisted suicide etc. And he does this all from the perspective of a town on the border of England and Wales. The town that has no official nationality.
Price: £7.99 Info: www.parthianbooks.com
words MONICA MARTIN