DISTORTED DAYS

The lives of ordinary Britons intertwine and evolve in this impressionistic literary novel.

Dreamlike shifts in perspective dominate this new work by Worthington, the author of Stained Glass Lives (2020). Doris Gambol secures a job at the library in Shrewsbury, England, after her husband leaves her. One day, a man collapses from insomnia at her branch; the chief librarian, Colleen Collect, calms him by reading from a book.As Colleen reads, he falls asleep, as the author poetically describes: “letters, words and sounds make a run for his coat and under his collar….Then a hissing sound envelops the three of them, a low fluting hiss, the gentle but certain beats of a Z.” After Doris leaves work, Colleen takes up the role of protagonist; on her way home, she visits her husband’s grave, then prepares for her friend, Andy, a grocery store employee, to drop by her house; when he does, the story moves to his perspective. In the same way one’s brain makes sense out of random events, the novel provides crucial bits of information here and there to orient readers. However, it still leaves readers to puzzle out the relationships between the characters, and it’s a tactic that can prove disconcerting, especially because Worthington employs heavy repetition; for example, when Doris drinks, the following passage is repeated, nearly verbatim, several times throughout the novel: “They make her drink. Guzzle until her stomach is a well, so full it begins to pour over the top and trickle down Utkinton Street, a red rivulet, an S shape all the way to the corner shop and back….” These are rich lines, so much like prose poetry. That said, they will likely bewilder some readers; there are no signposts as to why these sentences bear repeating nearly word for word. As a novel meant for the enjoyment of its language and structure, this work succeeds, but its pyrotechnics overshadow the story and obscure understanding.

A formidable work that resists narrative orthodoxy.