Glancing at the website of northern English author James Clarke’s agent, one notes a mention of the prospective film rights to Sanderson’s Isle – his second novel, with a short story collection interspersing 2018 debut The Litten Path and this followup.
Should anyone wish to take up that offer, what a splendid idea it would be. Set at the end of the 1960s, with the schism between straight society and the substratum of psychedelic dropouts making for some uneasy culture clashing, Clarke’s pacing is shrewd and cinematic, his characters vivid and beguiling.
Tom Speake, protagonist and narrator, is an out-of-work odd-job man with brains, street smarts and a certain malevolence. Joe Sanderson is a middle-aged TV presenter who hosts drug-fuelled orgies in his house. The pair overcome a mutual suspicion to work together, leaving London for the Lake District: here, Sanderson plans to research a book assisted by Speake, who happens to also be a wanted man after an altercation leaves a woman badly injured.
In the rural back of beyond, the pair find stranger and more lawless communities than they bargained for and get inexorably sucked into the madness. Threads from other, disparate parts of their lives intertwine, and the action hurtles towards a deranged conclusion which, in many ways, ends inconclusively. To this end, it upholds the filmic feel and depicts the crumbling end of a hazy decade vividly.
Sanderson’s Isle, James Clarke (Serpent’s Tail)
Price: £16.99. Info: here
words NOEL GARDNER