A body remembered
By: by David Chislett
Publisher: Ge'ko
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Johannesberg
Language: eng
Number of pages: 119
ISBN-13: 9780981441009
Subjects: Short stories, South African (English); City and town life; Fiction
Description: "Music journalist Dave Chislett has written a book. Or: the doyen of Joburg alternative culture has assembled over a dozen of short stories he has written over the last fifteen years and with the help of Ge'ko publishers has turned them into a collection. Chislett himself would prefer the second depiction, because one of the reasons for him to publish this anthology, he stresses repeatedly, is that he's eager to move away from the limiting label 'music writer'. Despite the typos and self-published look, the fifteen stories from A Body Remembered make for a riveting, if dark read. Chislett writes about desperate housewives and erotic fantasies with fatal endings; he describes Kafka-esque nightmares; he reworks myths and revels in twilight scenes and shady joints where anything can happen and nothing is strange. Most of it is written from the point of view of various dispassionate characters whose interior monologues and streams of consciousness Chislett tries to capture in words. And although there's very little music in the book, most of the stories do have a rock & roll feel, with lots of late night/early morning fatigue and emptiness. The overriding theme is that of people feeling trapped - in their body, in their mind, in their place of work, in their existence - which makes it a rather bleak book for someone who comes across as jovial and gregarious and who goes out of his way to help others"--Book SA website.