Jeremy Clarke
Space Man
Car Park Life
By Gareth E Rees
Influx Press 240pp £9.99
Gareth E Rees is totally obsessed with retail car parks. He is quite candid about it, confessing that this may be due to his unstable mind, which is ‘seized momentarily by fantastical visions’ caused by ‘an epilepsy of the imagination’. Nevertheless, he has decided to go public. In Car Park Life he explores a succession of British retail car parks and records everything he sees, hears, smells and thinks there. Nothing escapes his eager, somewhat paranoiac eye. He reads the graffiti, describes the litter and regales us with details of murders and assaults in car parks and of corpses found in them.
I set sail in these pages expecting a light read with the odd titter. ‘Everyone has a car park story and I’m sure you have your own,’ Rees says with disingenuous jollity in a brief author’s note preceding the text. I rose to the challenge and considered whether I
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Are iPhones ruining children's lives? A prominent American psychologist thinks so.
@tiffanyjenkins is not so sure:
Tiffany Jenkins - The Smartphone Pandemic
Tiffany Jenkins: The Smartphone Pandemic - The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an...
literaryreview.co.uk
India's 'festival of democracy', or general election, begins next month. Like every good festival, it looks likely to have its fair share of murders and arrests.
@OwenBennettJon probes the state of democracy in India:
Owen Bennett-Jones - New Delhi Confidential
Owen Bennett-Jones: New Delhi Confidential - The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India by Alpa Shah
literaryreview.co.uk
Where is the world's newest narcostate and why is it thriving?
@AdamBrookesWord investigates Asia's meth mecca.
Adam Brookes - Meth Comes to Myanmar
Adam Brookes: Meth Comes to Myanmar - Narcotopia: In Search of the Asian Drug Cartel That Outwitted the CIA by Patrick Winn
literaryreview.co.uk