Kirjahaku

ONE MORE WOULDN'T HURTBy Rick SmithA Novel of Booze, Birds and Getting Banged upTommy Bradman is on the downward spiral of alcoholism. In his mid-twenties, he is treacherously good looking, a compulsive womaniser and a criminal. The one constant in his life is Val, his long suffering girlfriend, who loves him with a passion, but knows she must eventually leave him. One More Wouldn't Hurt is a story of their struggle, and of those close to them. It is a hard hitting, rollicking novel of life in the raw. ExtractEastchurch, hut number two, Sunderland wing. It was an aerodrome during the war years: part of coastal command, according to Mr Newman: an amiable screw with a badly pock-marked face whose nickname was maggot. Like lots of small airfields constructed in desperate times it had gone downhill. Been forgotten. Fallen into disrepair, until some bright spark in Whitehall decided it would make an ideal open prison being miles from anywhere on the bleak, flat, Isle of Sheppey.Tommy had been there before in Seventy-Five, doing half a stretch: six months, for burglary.The place was a doddle in the summer, a right f****ng holiday camp, and he got the tan of his life during that never forgotten heat wave.However, it wasn't that clever in the winter: especially in the never ending Seventy-Nine winter. Talk about Arctic exploration. To stick your head under a tap of freezing water. Have a piss, or clean your teeth in a windowless, windswept, washroom-come-s**thouse, you had to cover a hundred yards of ice and slush in worn, rubber soled shoes.Not much fun at half seven in the morning, with a force eight gale blowing of the North Sea...

Rick Smith's two previous books dealt with the diminutive Wren...wren as metaphor, wren as symbol for our own frailties and neuroses. Wren was a delicate bird that must be handled with care. But now, it's a new game and Smith comes out swinging The gloves are off and he takes on the human condition in a "no-holds-barred" re-match that has been years in the making. In "Whispering in a Mad Dog's Ear", Smith shows that he isn't just a one trick pony. He writes about things that are near and dear, about harmonica players and having the blues, about drug addiction, about old lovers and adventures, about psych wards, about madness and redemption, about love and loss; in short, he writes eloquently about the wonders and horrors of life. Take for example, the poem entitled SWANS: Sure, there are swans, silver swans, coupling swans, swans so ominous they remind us of something pre-natal when we were tiny and subject to the counter-clockwise thrill of conception and likewise to the troubling possibilities of gravity. Swans on Silver Lake near where a body was found floating, a hollow swan on our bureau, once filled with cuff links, rings and small change. A pond near the house on the cape where one swan bedazzles herself in early Spring three years running. We watch from distance, counting the times reflection has failed us. There is a haunting beauty here, a suggestibility that doesn't need to go into detail because we already know instinctively what's going on. Such is the poetry of Rick Smith.