Steve Aylett, The Book Lovers (Snowbooks, 2024)
Steve Aylett is back with a new novel that could very well be his best work yet. In The Book Lovers, Aylett’s fireworks are at maximum intensity – dazzling, dizzying, and coming straight at you. Launched from one of the all-time great opening lines – ‘A book is like you and me – glued to a spine and doing its best’ – the text is hilarious, profound, and just a delight to engage with. Almost every sentence is rich, full of meaning, and contains enough avenues of thought to construct a city around. The majority of these sentences lay out truths so deep one wants to sit and spend an afternoon contemplating them. The writing, however, sweeps you along, crackling with electricity, megavolts on their way to illuminate heart, brain, and soul. I’m not the only one singing such high praises, the cover – and the artwork is lovely – features similar commendations from Alan Moore, Michael Moorcock, and Robin Ince. No one writes prose like Steve Aylett, or has quite such a singular worldview, ultra-cynical but way too funny to be completely despairing. His is a precision that appears out of thin air a millimeter away from its target. “‘It’ll get worse before it gets better’ – the fact that this statement is perennial should tell you something,” explains Sophie Shafto. Hugo Carpstein tells Inspector Nightjar “It’s your job to depict justice, isn’t it?” It’s that ‘depict’ that is perfect, saying so much about the surface level workings of government and its employees. As referenced above, there’s some of Aylett’s best character names too, and this is reflected in the version of 1885 London the book is set in, with locations such as Shroomsbury, Kimlico and Biccadilly. Another excellent joke I want to point out is ‘Albion holds its citizens in two cupped hands, and is sometimes so pleased it applauds.’
The setting is quite literally a steampunk world. Steam being one of the three main forces that powers industry here. The other two being voltaics and the wonderful ‘denial engine’, which the human race has most likely been running on since the dawn of time. There’s more plot here than in a typical Aylett book, though one can be forgiven, what with everything else going on, for not catching every detail. Sophie, daughter of magnate Lord Shafto, has been kidnapped and Inspector Nightjar is on the case, interrogating a cast of personalities who, whether given the chance to speak or not, spout sidesplitting bizarre complaints often only tangentially related to the topic at hand. With the book being so much about, well, books, it is tempting to look for Aylett himself behind the masks of say Hugo Carpstein or Sir Percy Valentine, and a description of the writer Emmanuel Feste describes our author to a tee – “an obscurity with a sixth sense of humour who was said to have blown ‘a swarm out of a whistle’, shouting from one horizon to the next about how morality is not altered by altitude and annoying all by demanding that his pursuers keep up.”
Sophie Shafto is a precocious youth who has sensed the importance of books from an early age. “In a box of sunlight by the window she tasted a vibratory honeychain of ideas confirming that human beings think and feel, a fact unacknowledged by the real people in her young life.” Books abound through the text, as they should in something called The Book Lovers, and there is a lovely bit of prescience in the fact that despite this being the late 19th century the population has become engrossed in ‘mirrored books’, complete with leather spines, held in one’s hand and gazed at all day long, an excellent dig at cell phone culture. And while these are an example of the superficiality of the masses, The Book Lovers is a testament to the power of books – in what it says about them and what it is itself.
Kevin Maloney, Horse Girl Fever: Stories (Clash Books, 2025)
In Kevin Maloney’s fiction there is always something wondrous happening, often pop-culturally infused, and the narrator is keenly aware of both. They happen to and around him, and his retelling of such experiences is almost always hilarious. This is greatly aided by the hyperawareness of their own shortcomings and willingness to dive headfirst into them. Maloney’s narrators keep falling deeply in love with every woman they see, whisk the willing of these off to exotic locales, and will most likely at some point vomit over themselves from drink, drugs, or a cocktail of the two. That’s not to say these stories are purely comedy or that the frequently dark subject matter – suicidal strippers, surprise deaths, teenage drug addicts and dealers – aren’t handled with concerned care. And the tone itself is never too dark, even when worlds are completely falling apart. I won’t conjecture that this is Maloney’s reason for writing these stories, but there is a (often desperate) need on the part of the narrators to connect with another human being, body and soul, no matter what the cost. Fortunately, some of these objects of affection are aware this isn’t in his best interest. For instance in the final story, ‘Epicenter’, where – after he’s been tossed into the alleyway by a gigantic bouncer and there attacked and bitten by a rat – a stripper tells him he doesn’t want to date her. Maloney’s presented circumstances seem as much jokes as they are all-too-real possibilities. There’s a lot of ridiculousness but it’s the kind of ridiculousness that is life. And I can’t overemphasize how funny Maloney is. A lot of that is down to his killer succinctness. His ability to give a tight, honest assessment of a situation with optimal word choice is powerful indeed.
The first three stories – ‘Ghost’, ‘Hannahs’, and the titular ‘Horse Girl Fever’ – all blend comedy and tragedy in the above manner and offer the widest range of emotions in this collection. Next up, ‘King Of The Pit’ is less nuanced, an account of seeing Alice In Chains during the third Lollapalooza, but it keeps getting funnier and funnier as undefined drugs crank up the mayhem of that strange bonding ritual known as the mosh pit. ‘Wrath Of The Red-Eyed Wizard’ is an ode to navigating work, alcohol, and sex after turning 40, while ‘Malaria Diaries’ sees the narrator and his whirlwind romantic partner cheating death down in Columbia. ‘The Informant’, one of the best stories of the bunch, takes things back to pure comedy, though the setting is still pretty dark – a dry run for drug smuggling gone very wrong. Within the humor, Maloney manages to throw in some wonderful descriptions of the U.S. Southwest – “spent the night whizzing across the mystical dreamscape that some people insist on calling Arizona”. The drugs keep on coming, and ‘No No’ is a first person recreation of Dock Ellis’ 1970 no-hitter, pitched under the influence of LSD. Given the subject matter, it fits right in. ‘Bloop’ is also a highlight, a few days spent experimenting with a drug called Lotricaine, an anti-fungal cream for birds. This new high goes beyond ketamine, which itself is excellently described as “makes you feel like you ripped the wings off a Pegasus and used them to fly over the city of your birth, laughing at your enemies”.
The past few years have proved that autofiction can be very funny indeed, with Maloney’s 2023 novel The Red-Headed Pilgrim being one of the best of the genre. Horse Girl Fever proves a fine addition to his work.
Madeline Cash, Earth Angel (Clash Books, 2023)
Speaking of hilarious autofiction, Madeline Cash’s Earth Angel is a delight. Cash’s prose is sharp, crisp, ironic yet real in a very pleasing way. Her dialogue is even punchier. Nothing wasted here. Her descriptions are always charmingly odd yet perfect to the situation. The humor comes from numerous angles – irony, a childlike wonder at the shit adults get up to, bemusement at all human interactions, wry acceptance of particularly puzzling aspects of modern life even while our humanness rails against them. In the first story, plagues have descended upon us, but at least this proves that God exists. This is followed by ‘The Jester’s Privilege’, an over-the-top account of a ludicrous though entirely-plausible-in-this-day-and-age PR job, changing the public face of a terrorist organization. While that’s happening the narrator also deals with a heavy friendship rivalry based on status, this derived from work and lovelife, and her own tepid uncertain romantic relationship. And kudos for a couple hilariously dark lines in a wedding speech. The two best stories are the title tale and ‘Slumber Party’. The latter being one of the funniest short stories I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. Nearly every sentence is a gem. The narrator wants to have a sleepover for her 30th birthday but after it becomes apparent how out-of-touch she is with her closest friends, she hires a company to create the experience for her. The corporateness of the affair is outrageously funny while the cost of the whole thing is simply outrageous. Cash has a unique sense of callback, always unexpected and, again, very droll. While Cash’s work is mostly comical, it’s not all so. There are keen observations about the awful way men too often treat women. One aspect of the title story is Anika’s truly horrific boyfriend, the famous actor Jake Willner, an ultra-violent control freak. While Cash details Anika’s attachment to him, Anika also of course has her own agency, the main part of the story being her interactions with the CEO of ‘Nosi’, a highly toxic and controversial fragrance machine manufacturer, who she’s tied to a membership program impossible to get out of. The different layers ‘Nosi’ operates on is bound to bring a smile. Another arrow in Cash’s comedic bow is when she has characters drop matter-of-fact truths. There are many excellent uses throughout the book, delivered in sniper-esque single shots, and said CEO neatly summing up Jake Willner on page 76 is exceptionally devastating. Cash also has a great sense of how amusingly complicated anything can get, shown at the end of ‘Earth Angel’ when she explains why Anika’s little brother doesn’t want to press charges against the car that broke his tibia. All the best qualities of Cash’s work culminate in this story. And these seeds blossom across this entire collection.
John Patrick Higgins, Fine (Sagging Meniscus, 2024)
With his debut novel, Higgins capitalizes on the dark humor offered up in his short dental surgery memoir, Teeth. Fine is not strictly a comedy novel, however. While there’s jokes aplenty – and almost every chapter title is a pun – the prose tends more towards Martin Amis than Wodehouse. That said, Wodehouse is mentioned by name in the getting-to-know-me third chapter, as Leave It To Psmith is protagonist Paul Reverb’s favourite book, The Smiths his favourite band. So complete a picture do we get of Reverb’s likes and dislikes, it would be understandable to take this as more autobiography. Higgins, outside of the book, has stated this is definitely not the case. But top marks for making it so believable.
Reverb is at work on a Young Adult novel about a hypnotist vampire by the name of Count Backwards. Interestingly, this pursuit is not the main focus of the story. Rather we see Paul as he comes to grips with uncomfortable parts of his personality and as he tries to be a better person. It’s just that in doing so, things tend to turn out pretty badly for him. Of course there’s other times where he’s not trying at all. One of the funniest bits in the novel is the ‘Through a glass, Barclay’s’ chapter, about a ‘dedicated wank day’ gone horribly and hilariously wrong. Much more wrong than you could imagine. And that’s not the only time in the novel there’s an issue with the same activity, the next being an incident which has the funniest description of a penis I’ve ever read – “furious and red, like a man arguing with a deckchair attendant”. It’s not all that obscene, though. There’s pop culture references galore throughout, for Paul has, as you might guess, a sizeable record collection and is very fond of film. As often goes hand in hand with these, he’s not so adept in the romance and socializing departments. These matters aren’t always played for laughs, though Higgins’ strong comic touch is never far away. There’s a quite touching funeral scene that nevertheless spawns a few good jokes. And without wishing to give anything away, the twist at the end is handled very well, especially considering how poorly it could have come off. But rather it is proof of Higgins’ talent that the denouement is so pleasing.