Five Years

Two short novels straddling the five years between 1989 â€" 1994, “Disorientation”, the first, is a crude, rude and rapidly paced novel that charts the life and times of “John” from May to August 1989 after his return from working in Israel, to London and then through to his departure again for Thailand four months later. Taken from a typewritten manuscript produced over the summer of that year, “Disorientation” records one young man’s splintered existence, fractured past and uncertain future. While events beyond his control redraw the world’s political, geographical and economical maps, his everyday life remains unchanged and forever daunting, day-to-day survival the only objective, a life skating on the edges of survival, flirting with dangers, strangers, drugs, drink, casual work and casual sex. “A Teesside Voice”, set in 1994 in London at the dawn of mobile communications, is a strident commentary on Thatcherism. Rob Barlow, a Class-A drug-dealing northern immigrant to the capital, is inextricably tangled up in this highly lucrative but dangerous business. Money is designed to buy things yet it seems Rob, who has thousands lying around his unfurnished luxury apartment in London’s Chalk Farm, only uses it to make more. Despite living in a decadent, material world where everything has an over-inflated price, Rob exists on less than the essential: drugs, cigarettes, rent, booze, taxis and luck. He has no friends - only customers, and they pay him to take the risks they daren’t. Emotional contact is reduced to brief sexual exchanges, human contact to voices on telephones and, when one voice in particular starts to threaten him, his anaesthetized world unravels just enough to offer a splinter of redemption, but at what price?