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The Silence RoomSean O'Brien
Categories: 21st Century, British, First Collections, Humour
Imprint: Comma Press Publisher: Comma Press Available as:
Chain-smoking alcoholics, warring academics, gothic stalkers and aspiring writers are just some of the visitors that browse the mysterious library at the heart of Sean O’Brien’s fiction debut. Idlers and idolisers alike can be referenced, in body or in text, among the crepuscular alcoves and dim staircases of this seemingly unassuming building. The secret to a family curse, a dog-eared first edition of Stevens’ Harmonium, the gruesome fate of a feminist literary theorist – all are available to simply take down from the shelf, as are the catalogue of genres and subject areas that O’Brien himself effortlessly deploys: from gothic horror to English pastoral, Critical Theory to Cold War noir. Take a walk between these shelves. Crack the spine and the blow the dust off lives unlived because, so far, they’re unread. Become, if you dare, as trapped as them…
'Often in the last scene, often in the last line, O'Brien... withdraws his offer of a pint of mild in the local piss-palace and nails your bottom lip to the bar instead...'
M John Harrison in the TLS 'Strange, creepy, often brilliant...' The Financial Times 'The prose, winging between stateliness and the coarsest urban patois, is fluent and flawless...' The Independent on Sunday
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M.O.
Edited by Martin Edwards
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