‘As if Samuel Beckett had written The Goshawk’
(Mark Valentine)
The Look Away by Richard Skelton (Xylem Books) is an austere and powerful novella about a fugitive in remote country in a world of dark truths and bleak, whittled beauty. It is a study of isolation and the stark facts of survival, yet it is also attentive to the brittle transience shared by all living things, and how this gives every moment an intense significance. The writing is compelling and insistent and makes a deep impress upon the reader.
This is Richard Skelton’s first long fiction and possesses all the haunting, mesmeric qualities of his music, poetry, film work and essays. The original limited edition sold out it in days but now The Look Away is available again in paperback.
‘A narrative of menace and wonder’
(Julian Hyde)
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