Product Description

M. John Harrison's first collection of stories since THE ICE MONKEY ('bears comparison with Peter Carey and Ian McEwan, but he is grittier than Carey and wittier than McEwan' -- TLS). These are brilliant, obliquely fantastic tales, grounded in an acutely-observed contemporary reality, into which obtrude flashes of a world beyond our world, a world which would transform the lives of the book's characters, if only they knew how to find it.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2761279 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Having previously published eight novels and three collections of stories, M. John Harrison's latest collection, Travel Arrangements, confirms the abilities of a writer of singular subtlety and intelligence; that he is not more celebrated may in part be due to the tendency of writers to be categorised by genre. The author's previous books have often been labelled as science-fiction or fantasy but the stories gathered here demonstrate the limitations of such categories. Harrison's writing balances disquietingly on the edge of realism and careful descriptions of quotidian life and place, shifting into intimations of worlds of feeling and states of mind briefly glimpsed. Most striking is his ability to unnerve and disturb with the most economical of means, without need for overt passages of terror or excess. If there is the sensibility of genre here, it is that of the everyday observed by an eye accustomed to strangeness--the science-fiction world applied to the dark terrains of sexuality, desire, travel and one's own neighbourhood. A woman executing her brother's will, anatomies of brief relationships, a detective in search of a serial killer, a young man who uses the Tarot to determine and direct random journeys--all hint at the unfathomable complexity of the world in which we live. However, this capacity for observation is not without humour, for in the story "Black Houses" we get a description of the narrator's neighbours--landed gentry fallen on hard times:

Lord Arquiss was 77. He kept a Volvo the colour of a cheap brogue, and a 50-year-old ex-ballerina who claimed to be his wife. From the disaster they had salvaged an amazing 3rd Reich-style bed, the elongated black wooden posts of which were capped with vast polished eagles like lecterns. Every night you could see the two of them sitting up in this thing like two bull terriers in a pram.

Highly praised by writers such as Iain Banks and the late Angela Carter, M. John Harrison's elegant, uneasy fictions deserve our attention. --Burhan Tufail

About the Author
M. John Harrison was born in the Peak District and now lives in London.

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Customer Reviews

Fine writing. One of Moorcock's and Sinclair's few peers.
Travel Arrangements is a showcase of M.John Harrison's short fiction, so characteristic as to hit you at once both with its feel for language and the bleak originality of its vision. There are very few writers to match Moorcock and Sinclair at their best, few who have, since J.G.Ballard (one of Harrison's influences) produced such influential work. This would be a great introduction for someone who hasn't read Harrison before, but like Moorcock and Sinclair he can move quite readily from tragedy to irony, from spare, harsh landscape to the lush streets of Viriconium (whose tales have just been reissued) and the baroque outer space as conceived by Bach and Bosch of The Centauri Device. Harrison is nothing but quality, and this is refined, elegant Harrison at his quietly swaggering best.

Good, but not the place to start with this author
A collection of short stories written between 1983 and 2000, all of which have appeared elsewhere, though in a diverse range of publications (most of them were new to me). Readers familar with M. John Harrison's work will not be disappointed by the quality of this collection, but admirers may be a little disquieted by the fact that that the earlier stories seem superior to the later (some of which are mere shards: in the manner of the later novels but lacking the substance).

More seriously, there is little here to surprise. One of the joys of this author's work has been his mutation from 'New Worlds' clone (author of the Ballardian 'The Committed Men' and the early short story collection 'The Machine in Shaft Ten' to distinctive fantasist in the 'Viriconium' sequence, and then to mainstream author of real achievement. It is hard to imagine that the same writer could have been responsible for 'The Centauri Device', 'A Storm of Wings', 'Climbers', and 'The Course of the Heart', all excellent and highly recommendable. 'Travel Arrangements' by contrast is very much a sampler rather than an advance, and there is a sense that the best of the author's writing in this later vein has appeared elsewhere: notably in the earlier collection 'The Ice Monkey', whose best story, 'Egnaro', anticipates much of the present collection's imagery and tone of voice.

However, Harrison's standard remains high, and no reader of 'Travel Arrangements' is likely to be disappointed. It is a remarkably unified collection considering the extended period of composition, and fails only by comparison with the best of his earlier achievements.

I consider Harrison to be one of the most underrated writers of his generation, and I strongly recommend anyone interested in English fiction of high quality to investigate further. In particular, readers who habitually avoid fantasy and science fiction because of the genre's juvenile associations should be aware that Harrison more than most is traduced by his earlier reputation in those fields. He is one of a small number of English writers (I would add the names of Iain Sinclair, Robert Holdstock, Mary Gentle and Haydn Middleton) who are extending the legacy of the classic English fantasists while avoiding the traps of genre cliche. Harrison is also one of the few contemporary writers whose feeling for English provincial life rings true. Why his name is not mentioned more frequently alongside those of Ballard and Angela Carter (and above that of of Ian McEwan, as on the jacket of 'Travel Arrangements') escapes me. I await his next novel with anticipation.

Three stars by Mr. Harrison's exacting standards: four by comparison with almost everything else this year.

Departure Time
M John Harrison's restless, increasingly human eye has led him a strange dance through the genres. The sf and fantasy of early novels like The Centauri Device and Viriconium gave way to the unrelenting realism of Climbers, after which he seemed to feel more comfortable with himself and began to reach naturally for whatever means of expression came to hand. This produced a series of extreme hybrids--including Signs of Life, described as "a sci-fi horror fantasy women's romance for men"--in which genres were picked up and put down at will, and which left his readers rather breathlessly wondering what he would do next. Here, he shows us exactly what to expect. In an extension of the method he seems to have chosen in the late 70s, more and more of the fantastic has been shaved out of the fiction, leaving us with people pure and simple, depicted in a tight, terse, wickedly humorous prose that reminds one of Raymond Carver or Charles Bukowski. "Black Houses" and "Science & the Arts" are almost arrogant illustrations of what Harrison is now capable of, and a clear indication of his next direction. As a result the stories of the 80s-- "Old Women", "The Gift", and "Small Heirlooms" --in this volume now seem florid and romantic by comparison; while even the extraordinary work of his "Ice Monkey" period suddenly feels transitional and much less assured. There's little doubt that the chronological ordering of Travel Arrangements was designed to demonstrate this to the reader. The last story in this collection has a confidence in its own insights that makes the first seem like the work of an amateur. This said, it needs to be firmly maintained that Harrison has outdistanced only himself. Stories like "Gifco" and "The East" are up with the best of modern fiction, and way ahead, especially in terms of their emotional intelligence, of anything being produced by other slipstream writers. Five stars, partly for producing the best short story collection of the year, partly for being out ahead of everyone else for so long, and partly for acheiving the ambition he has clearly had since "The Ice Monkey": to write directly about life.