Ariadne's Thread

  ‘Dogs were with us from the very beginning. And of all the animals that walked the long centuries beside us, they always walked the closest’ A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by C. A. Fletcher. A Review by Lucy Nield. @lucy_nield1 Charlie Fletchers 2019 dystopia A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World, presents us with an emptying world. Our world. Devoid of familiar human civilisation for 3 or 4 generations, Britain is a changed place. The landscape echoes of the loss of humanity, piles of bones appear in the most unlikely places and the topography is an overgrown mesh of the man-made and the natural amalgamating into something new. In a preface to the novel, Fletcher asks the reader to keep Griz’s secrets and try to avoid spoilers. So, I will do my very best not give too much away… Griz and his family live on a small island above Scotland, only ever meeting their direct neighbours on the odd occasion. Griz loves to read. Gleaning books from nearby houses and l...

  'They know that they are monsters, but I believe they do not really understand what that means to humans.' Lucy Nield reviews 1997 novel Lives of the Monster Dogs, by Kirsten Bakis.                  @lucy_nield1 Shockingly I have not come across Bakis before, and I am certainly glad that fellow PhD student (David Tierney) leant me his twentieth-anniversary edition for me to read. This edition also includes an extremely valid and thought-provoking introduction from Jeff Vandermeer, which makes you confront thoughts and themes present throughout the text. A Preface introduces us to Cleo, who is going to tell us the tale of the monster dogs. Cleo informs the reader that it has been 6 years since the events of the novel took place, when was 21 the dogs arrived. Suffering from heartbreak she was walking in New York on the West Side when the helicopter landed and the first dog had arrived. What she saw stood on hind legs, wore clothes an...

‘They did find footprints. And they weren’t human.’ The Sideways Award Winner: The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky. A Review by Lucy Nield @lucy_nield1 The Doors of Eden, is one of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s 2020 publications, alongside Firewalkers. As an admirer of Tchaikovsky’s previous novels such as Arthur C. Clarke winning Children of Time and internationally loved Dogs of War, I was excited to be submerged into another speculative world, with eager anticipation of what many legged creatures we may, or may not, meet. I was not disappointed. Whilst the Blurb might suggest a novel overwhelmed by conspiracy theories and cryptozoological mysteries, this text moves far beyond what you can possibly expect or imagine with the mention of ‘monster hunting’ as a starting point. I will be the first to admit that I lost touch with reality whilst reading. You do not feel a sense of existentialism with this text, more of an acceptance, that there could be something more. However tenuous,...

Netflix’s 'Love and Monsters,' a Review: ‘You don’t have to settle, even at the end of the world.’ Lucy Nield @lucy_nield1 Netflix’s Love and Monsters (2020), promises the viewer a post-apocalyptic adventure, with lashings of romance, community spirit and heroic determination to survive. A comet called Agatha 6-1-6 was heading towards Earth, threatening to kill every living thing on the planet. So in true and predictable human fashion, those in power responded to this threat by launching rockets, nuclear weapons and missiles to prevent the pending collision. Unfortunately, they failed to consider the aftermath of blowing up Agatha, which included a ‘Monsterpocalypse.’   The chemical compounds and radiation form the weapons used to obliterate the comet, rained down over the world, infecting insects a various nonhuman animals, causing mutations and exponential growth in size. The mutated creatures displace humans at the top of the food chain, devouring cities and and ruining ...

“But what if someone died wearing it?”              This refrain is familiar to anyone who has a penchant for vintage or pre-loved clothes, usually uttered by a friend whose expression contorts in distaste at the thought of wearing clothes that another person has lived, loved and potentially perished in.  Admittedly, this sort or sartorial squeamishness is becoming less common, as environmental awareness increases and secondhand clothes become items of sustainability, rather than eccentricity.           And yet it’s a concern that is located at the heart of Peter Strickland’s In Fabric (2018), a peculiar film that can be found at the point where the Italian giallo horror genre and David Lynch meet.  The plot, if you will excuse the pun, is threadbare.  There is no comforting three act construction that audiences have gotten used to in their films; no conclusions, no resolution.  Instead, there is...