Where We Live By Tim Cooke
I would like to thank the author for a copy of this collection in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Demain Publishing
Published – Out Now
Price - £2.28 Kindle eBook £6.36 paperback
Where We Live’ is a collection of loosely connected short stories that track the same central character’s experience of some of the landscapes surrounding his family home. These landscapes contribute directly or metaphorically to the protagonist’s understanding of his place in the world. Tim Cooke is interested in what drives us to seek out these outshift and edgeland environments and how such landscapes can act upon us. He considers his work to fall into the emerging category of ‘landscape punk’, while some stories directly address themes consistent with works of ecogothic. The collection isn’t outright horror; Tim Cooke is subtle, atmospheric and at times purposefully ambiguous―and as such creates something quite unique…
Geography can also be personal history. This park where we played as children, this building that we danced all night, here where I watched my first live band. Walking where we live is not just about mobility it can give us a unique sense of time travel. In Tim Cooke’s remarkable collection Where We Live tales of childhood homes are combined with fantasy and horror to give us a truly immersive read that I was hugely impressed by.
Among the tales I enjoyed
Kestrels and Crows - a simple one paragraph piece of fiction that is beautifully composed and sets a mission statement for the wider collection.
The Drive Home – A fascinating tale that starts off as nostalgia but then feeds into that sense we get of a child that the whole world is about to go wrong. Tension and strangeness that doesn’t explain itself and therefore makes the tale even more compelling.
The Box of Knowledge – Teenagers for whom life is meaningless find an abandoned hut that for a brief time becomes the centre of their world but inside it a growing darkness starts to take over. Its meaning, cruel and hard to look away from what happens and its brilliantly creepy.
An Orkney Saga – a family trip to the Orkney Isles is described and on the one hand we see a child awed by the strange monuments but there is an unsettling air of how this family isn’t all gelling, and one single line really takes the reader by surprise and shock.
Nights at The Factory - a gang of teens who love vandalising a strange factory find the new caretaker has more than a few surprises within it. A story that captures teenage boredom and rebellion but then turns into something mythic and strange in the middle of an industrial wasteland. Hugely enjoyable and my favourite in the collection.
Asylum - a tale of a strange building in the middle of nowhere and yet also a hugely personal tale of loss are wonderfully entwined. Some beautiful and yet very melancholy writing to enjoy in this one.
Overall, I loved how Cooke creates that sense of childhood lost and growing out of it at the same time. The tales are unpredictable but hugely vivid and impressively its is like an entire alternate landscape painted over a place that many of us who grew in towns may recognise. Well worth your time.
