Saturday, 5 December 2015

The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams


I would love to have some more Nocturnes from Kazuo Ishiguro, certain stories from Heavy Water are among the best things Martin Amis has written, and Will Self’s Grey Area has never left my writing desk (lest I forget just how good “Between The Conceits” is). It’s a shame that a short story is merely a distraction for an established author. 

So much so that you really have to be a dreamer. Thankfully, there’s one such dreamer in America, and his new collection of stories (published a month ago) is as good a book as I’ve read this year. The man knows a short cut to a nightmare you wish to see. And when he writes like Raymond Carver (no shame in that; there isn’t a better short story writer than Raymond Carver), he still ends up writing like Stephen King. Which pays off: The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams is escapism of the highest order.