In his considered and heartfelt introduction to We Were Strangers, an anthology of newly commissioned short stories named after the 10 tracks on Joy Division’s debut album Unknown Pleasures, Richard V Hirst describes how Joy Division became “the means by which some dark energy first took hold of the listening consciousness”. This dark energy, entangled with the myth of Joy Division, and the suicide 38 years ago of their lead singer Ian Curtis, continues to endure and inspire, and this book is potent testament to that.
Fittingly and beautifully designed by Zoë McLean, with a nod to the original album cover, this matt-black bound collection is likely to be desired by every Joy Division fan. But for those readers who aren’t familiar with the band, these stories exist boldly in their own right – from the speculative to the ruminative, from the dystopian to the absurdly humorous.
Wilderness by Eley Williams, wonderfully conceived and written, examines the obsessive life of a non-gendered ice resurfacer: “I re-buff things for a living and gloss things over.” Concerned about becoming snowblind, and bemused as to why anybody would bother to watch professional ice skating, Williams’s malevolent protagonist exhibits a hatred for all those who mess up the pristine ice, likening it to “watching someone scratch a lens”. A visit to the zoo leads the ice resurfacer to make contact with a balloon seller, and the outcome feels like a twisted scene straight out of David Lean’s Brief Encounter.
For more read he full of article at The Guardian
