The Birthday Party

Descent or Ascent. Which and into what is the question, the abyss, bliss, madness... the truth? A wonderfully honest, stunningly funny read with characters you immediately care for, that you immediately know have real depth, wells of vices & virtues from which they will draw. And a beautifully sharp observational eye. Something in the style of the writing reminds me of William Gibson, the short, cutting descriptions, someone who knows about these things could probably put a name to it. The observed juxtaposition of the hope and the reality, the sublime and the mudane. All the time informed by a confident premonition of how things will be... may be.. could be. And perhaps there I think is the core of this story. This is the dialectic of how reality truly unfolds, the plans and the actual, the theory and the practice, the desire and its inevitable consequence. This is how it is that the dirt makes us clean, that as Leonard Cohen put it, "there is a crack in everything... that's how the light gets in". Well that's what I thought anyway, I absolutely loved it but go, grab yourself a glass and start reading, sink into the madness yourself.