FINISHED READING - Bard Skull by Martin Shaw

This is truly a peculiar book. Filled with folk stories mixed in with an opaque memoir, written as though the memoir and the myth were exactly the same thing. One human experience perceived entirely through a mythological lens. This proved to be an endurable, but rarely an enjoyable read.

There are, as is usual with Shaw, a lot of expertly told tales which could conceivably carry you far along on this literary journey. The book blurb on the back, informss you Bard Skull is a recollection of three epic journeys Shaw made a few years ago. Now, having read the book for myself, I can truthfully say I hardly spotted any of that. There were a few flecks of it fleetingly seen glinting like mica in a cave. But I don't think that expectations of a heightened mystical travelogue helped me comprehend any better what it was I was reading. Indeed, what was the purpose in this being written in this form at all?

My experience of reading Bard Skull, for most of its three hundred plus pages was of a lot of expectant waiting for the penny to drop. There was no Aha! moment for me. I suspect the journeys and the way Shaw has chosen to structure and retell them are too idiosyncratic and deeply personal, for even an averagely intelligent reader such as myself, to fully perceive or comprehend what is really going on. It is not by any stretch of a wild imagination a page turner, but then its not completely devoid of interest either. The poetic richness of the language and eccentricity of its compositional patterning is perhaps it. The inflection is all. If you can enjoy that as a stand alone quality, then I hope this book will reveal to you some of its no doubt iridescent, though we'll concealed, pleasures. 

Shaw seems to have needed to get something off his chest here, to explore another way of writing that never quite makes it into his usual portmanteau of storytelling. Perhaps if this book could chime its import to anyone else, it would say that our lives and experiences are more truthfully perceived when seen as a personal myth we are active participants within.  

So, as I said, this is an odd reading experience, because it gives you so very little to go on to feed and sustain you as a reader. You travel without sandwiches. What the hell is the literary journey he is so determinedly dragging you through? I simply could not say. I did not reach the point of being 'quite doggedly determined' during the reading of Bard Skull, but it was always a close run thing. There were periods when I suspected I could just stop and perhaps be better off at being no wiser how this would conclude. I could have read it backwards, or randomly open it at a different place everyday, and the experience may have had no discernible difference. 

By the time I reached its final few pages exasperation did hit me and and I crossly skipped to the end. Putting it down with a final release of suppressed irritation, enough, enough of this obscuration and fiddling with the gilt edge of mythic twiddle twaddle.

I want to say to Martin Shaw, I respect you and your work a lot, and thank you for even envisaging to write this book. The fact that your publisher gave you this amount of bound paper space to explore your creative urges in, is truly laudable. However, some artistic experiments are best left for your literary archivist to rediscover. So next time, if there be a next time, I'd request - please keep this sort of thing to yourself mate.

CARROT REVIEW - 3/8