A MOUTHFUL OF BRICKS
PicadorJune 2021Selected by Barbara Epler
In this rondel of interlocking stories, more or less loosely connected repeating characters in London appear, disappear and reappear. Like Lewis Carroll or Muriel Spark, the author is not content with the normal measly amount of dimensions: he goes in for bewitchment as a narrative art. The most hypnotic aspect of all is the fact that you can never quite put your finger on how Ridgway casts his spell. He delivers that shock of a master thief stealing your watch: when you later look at your wrist, all you know is that, in more ways than one, you don’t know what time it is. A Shock is at once deracinated yet potent with place, and druggy, but shot through with a terrifying penetration of reality. — Barbara Epler
He drumbled, stats and notches. Wrong word. Insurmountable. He liked the long words, they felt manipulatable, like things in his mouth. Manipulatable. But they were too long, too big. They were cubes and blocks (oh! notches!) and he couldn’t catch his breath. It was nice. It was fine. But what could he do with them. He had a mouthful of bricks and he was trying to build something in there. A house. An aircraft carrier. A maze of places he could go. He needed and wanted and required things that were smaller and more precise. Measurements is a long word for example. Seems inconsiderate. Something smaller. A tiny thing. So small. Notches for example, was a pretty good fix.
NotchesNotChesOtChesTchEssFixIxxIGod noX
Nothing was coming through him but innards, his innermost. His skin was a leathery peel. A wet dry thing. He had been scraped and reapplied to himself and now he was dying in the street like an ant on a fire.
Notches.
He didn’t know why he was repeating that word.
So annoying. Such inconsideration.
Only small words from here on.
As a kid he’d sat by the fireplace and used the tongs (tongs?) to put tiny pieces of paper on lumps of coal (coal?) and pretended they were airplanes that had crashed onto the sides of volcanos and he waited for them to burn. Sometimes they just sat there curling and sometimes they burst suddenly into orange. Into flames.
He was going to get hit by a car. He wedged this thought against others and it held for a while. Little car units scurrying past him, running at his shoulder, barely missing him, coming the other way with their knife glint windows and their stares. There weren’t many people around. Not here. He paused in the shadow of a corner and let the sweat out. Just let it come out.
He’d suck off pretty much anyone right now. Any passer-by. Any car driver. Any sort of astronaut, mountain climber, goatherd, sheep boy, idiot son of Donkey Kong.
What was that? ◉
After publishing his sixth novel Hawthorn & Child in 2013, Keith Ridgway reportedly lost all interest in writing. A Shock marks his return.