The passage of time verses immortality. Intimacy verses alienation. Imagination verses reality.
Titles are meant to sum up the work and be striking enough to make someone take the book off a shelf and start reading. The added bonus of multiple interpretations over the title are like catnip to authors and indicate that a reader has an added incentive to read it.
Based in Japan, but originally from North London, Stephen J. Golds is noted for writing noir fiction like I’ll Pray When I’m Dying as well as authoring various books of poetry like Poems for Ghosts in Empty Tenement Windows I Thought I Saw Once and editing Punk Noir Magazine.
The blurb on the back lays the plot out in stark terms:
“This isn't a love story.
It's not a story about the boy who gets the girl.
The girl, Amelie, is dead. She killed herself.
The boy, Vincent, has been committed to a mental health crisis unit in North London after his own failed suicide attempt.
Now Vincent is refusing treatment and has given up on any kind of recovery, instead choosing to live in the memories of the time he and Amelie were together--trying to change his recollections in order to alter the past and save Amelie from the death he blames himself for.”
So begins our voyage into the psyche of Vincent as he alternates between maudlin expressions of sadness, anger at everyone and everything (especially himself) and the odd moment of euphoria when the happy memories linger on a little longer than anticipated. Due to his depression, he is a frustrating narrator who can test the reader’s patience. However, it’s important to remember that the throes of depression can be much deeper and entrenched in the mindset than you think, playing on the more self-pitying, narcissistic elements of the human mindset. So while readers can be infuriated, we have to go along for the ride if we want to understand such characters.
The constant shift from memories/fantasies and the present has the potential to frustrate those more used to linear narratives but is in character for Vincent. Throughout, he idolises Amelie but she always seems elusive and attacks Vincent in certain parts. In such moments, you can feel him collapse into reality.
An intense, frustrating and (at times) harrowing read. But one that lets you see how it’s impossible to “snap out” of depression.
Stephen J. Golds, 2023, Shadows Slow Dancing in Derelict Rooms. Outcast Press, ISBN-13: 979-8864336465
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist.
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