FICTION REVIEW SHRAPNEL APARTMENTS BY CHRIS KELSO

22/9/2017

By Jim Mcleod

HORROR FICTION BOOK REVIEW SHARPNEL APARTMENTS BY CHRIS KELSO UK HORROR REVIEW WEBSITE GINGER NUTS

Marillion once asked

"Where are the prophets, where are the visionaries, where are the poets
To breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary."

We live in a world where, as the song title suggests, has gone totally FUGAZI . As consumers of art we have fallen into the trap of settling for the safe and secure, a world where vanilla and magnolia artists are hailed as geniuses. It is also a world where some of us strive instant fame no matter what the cost is. Where are the successors to Brett Easton Ellis, Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palanhuik, and Hunter S Thompson. Where are the writers who make us, as readers, challenge ourselves while they dissect the human condition, and the failings of a modern throw away pop culture, and instant fame-obsessed mentality?

In a world where extreme ideologies sit side by side on the news with the vacuous modern celebrity culture, we need our prophets, poets and visionaries more than ever, luckily for us, we have writers like Chris Kelso ready to take up the mantle.

Shrapnel Apartments is the follow up to Kelso's excellent Unger House Radicals, which ended up being my top read of 2016. Where Unger House Radicals challenged us to examine what we considered art with the use of his Ultra-Realism art movement of the two central protagonists, Shrapnel Apartments takes this one stage further and forces us to examine the almost animalistic urge for some of us to seek fame no matter what the cost to our souls will be. Are we evil for desiring it, are we evil for watching others in their quest for it, or is the media who enable it evil?

As with Unger House Radicals, Shrapnel Apartments has a complex and at times challenging narrative style. This isn't a novel that you can read while something else is going on in the background. And this is in no way meant as a criticism, as this is a book that rewards the reader who pays it full attention. Narratively speaking it is as though Kelso has let off a literary grenade and allowed some of the shrapnel to embed itself onto the pages of this novel. The fractured nature of the story unfolds from multiple personal stories, and while at first, they may seem unconnected and somewhat disorientating, they entwine around each other with a brutal and majestic beauty to reveal a twisted tapestry of human nature.

There are three main narrative threads in Shrapnel Apartments
Bobby Reilly, a corrupt cop who is even viler than the child-killer Beau Carson that he is relentlessly chasing. Rielly is the pure distillation of every corrupt cop from Joe Cooper to the Bad Lieutenant himself, Rielly actions and appetites are so repugnant that you almost end up rooting for Carson.

Then there is the neverending struggle of Florence Coffey, an eternal victim, destined to be used abused and tossed aside for all eternity. It is here that Kelso's used of the shrapnel narrative shines the brightest, told from various first-person viewpoints while also throwing in such things as coroner reports, police statements and various other clever techniques. It is as bold as it is brash, and it could so easily have come across as more style over substance. However in Kelso's more than capable hands this narrative thread becomes the main thrust of the stories look at the disposable nature of fame and lengths at which those who seek it will go to grab it is heartbreaking in its intensity.

Finally, we have an almost humorous account of the fight between a pair of critics/ writers Gottlieb and Mancuso. This section of the story is a darkly humorous look at the pointlessness of feuds, vendettas, and how media and those who we think of as friends can so easily manipulate the course of events. In a genre that doesn't seem capable of going one day without some feud breaking out, Kelso looks at the futility of this will raise a sly chuckle on may a reader.

Tying all of these shrapnel threads together is Black Cap and his apprentice King Misery, two possible supernatural or cosmic entities whose surreptitious machinations are behind everything that goes on in the book. You can see Black Cap's fingerprints all over the individual pieces of shrapnel, manipulating the lives of everyone for his own sneering entertainment. Blackcaps disdain for humanity and his view that we are all insignificant is a perfect metaphor for the uncaring world around us. As we strive to be noticed, endeavour to find fame and adulation, Black Cap and the world at large just views us like ants, completely insignificant, and worthless to those in charge.

Shrapnel Apartments is a triumphant return to the world of Unger House Radicals, Kelso as carried over many of the themes and narrative styles that made the first book such a success and turned then up to eleven. Kelso dares to make us step out of our comfort zone, dares us to pay attention for fear of missing a vital tidbit, and dares us to be repulsed at the dark nature that resides in all of us.

Kelso forces us to lift our heads up and take a look at "the Time-Life-Guardians in their conscience bubbles, Cast adrift as their side-show, peepshow, we are drowning in the reel. He is a prophet and a visionary for our times.

The limited hard cover of Shrapnel Apartments has sold out. We will bring you full details of when the paperback and e-book are available . In the meantime we highly recommend that you pick up unger housae radicals by clicking here