(Nimue)
Passing Place, by Mark Hayes is a beautiful, bonkers sort of a book. This is speculative fiction, with a story that isn't easily explained at all without spoilers. What I can say with some confidence is that if you like the kind of bonkers and speculative fiction I write then the odds are you're going to also enjoy what Mark does. I feel that we may have been cut from the same cloth. (I think it was a pair of intergalactic trousers, with a print design it might be safest not to examine too closely.)
I'm not claiming objectivity here. Mark is a friend, I know him through steampunk events. To all intents and purposes, Mark is on of the Gloucestershire steampunks, despite the small technical detail of his currently living a rather long way from Gloucestershire. He's a fine chap, has piled in to help me with book layouts, keeps buying my stuff and has been incredibly supportive and encouraging of me as a person, so, I have biases. But it's also fair to say that a big part of why I like him is because he's funny, and kind and interesting and all of that shows up in his writing.
There's a lot of humour in Passing Place. A surprising amount for a book whose story centres on a suicide. Trigger warnings here for anyone who has been suicidal or lost someone to suicide or otherwise been too far into that terrain for comfort. There were a lot of very familiar thoughts and feelings in the story. There's a lot of pathos, and insight, compassion and philosophy all woven together to make something extraordinary. I cried several times.
I found a surprising amount of myself in these pages. Mark wrote it long before we met, so it isn't that he's knowingly taken scenes from my life. It was disconcerting to read the things that were close to the bone for me, but also deeply cathartic. There's a lot that's restorative about this book. It's a story of wounding and loss and heartbreak and what you do afterwards. Too many stories focus on the drama, and not what happens to your life when the drama stops but you don't. It's good territory to explore, and I think a lot of people will find parts of themselves in the characters, and the stories.
If you're the sort of lost little monster who is looking for Midian, The Passing Place is well worth a visit. There's a forest in the cellar, the kitchen depends on non-linear systems of cause and effect, and the front door could open to just about anywhere. Or anywhen. A haven for the lost, it might be exactly the place you need to spend some time. It certainly was for me.
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