Review by Sally Shaw of "The Two Keisukes" by Brian Howell

The Two Keisukes is written in the third person and printed on cream cotton rag feathered-edged paper. The elongated pages are hand sewn to form a beautiful booklet. This short story is written by Brian Howell, author of several booklets and novels that include Sight Unseen. 

Prior to reading this story I had no knowledge of Howell. The content description provided by the publisher inspired me to read it.

The opening paragraph intrigued me, the words clear and crisp: "He had been here before, no, not here exactly, but then, yes, that building, an old fashioned school building that could have been from almost any period before or after the war."

Howell writes with such precision and beauty. I felt the wonderment he holds for the man, Keisuke Kinoshita, whose identity is given halfway through the story.

The story takes place on an island and yet the reader is made aware of the possibility that it’s being viewed from a distance or on the margins of time. The reader is taken from the shore of the island into a wonderland of past, present and unknown. Keisuke walks through alleyways and corridors, taking in the sights and sounds filled with the forgotten waiting to be rediscovered: "Walking further to the edges of this large park-like area, he saw a very curious group of turquoise sculptures that was both painfully familiar and yet unidentifiable."

Throughout his wanderings of the island, buildings and alleyways I’m drawn to him, I like Keisuke - both of them. I form an insight as to where each Keisuke is, one on the island, the other between the island and somewhere else. Floating in the past, present and unknown, in my mind I have ideas, two to be exact. I won’t say anymore as this would spoil Howell’s story. I will say, that through reading Howell’s words I formed the opinion that Keisuke and the others named were indeed real people (I had no prior knowledge of the Japanese film industry and history), and I sensed the history and connections between them all. I visualised what was possibly happening to the two Keisukes, felt the emotions and the power of recall and realisation of life. The ending touched my heart in a non-sentimental way. 

Around the two Keisukes Howell provides a portrait of the culture and history of Japan and the enchantment of the Japanese film industry. I read this booklet over and over again, each time discovering something new. I have started to research the individuals within Howell’s story, such was the energy of the writing. This is magical storytelling of a country, people and industry I knew nothing about, but now I want to get to know them and read more of Howell’s stories.

About the reviewer
Sally Shaw has an MA Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. She gains inspiration from old photographs, history, childhood memories, and is inspired by writers Sandra Cisneros, Deborah Morgan, Liz Berry and Emily Dickinson. She has short stories and poetry published in various online publications including The Ink Pantry, AnotherNorth, Roi Faineant Press. Sally lives in the countryside. 

Review by Mike O'Driscoll of "In the Garden" by Brian Howell

Like the central figure of Hieronymous Bosch’s triptych on St Anthony, the protagonist of Brian Howell’s In the Garden is subject to his own mix of erotic and demonic temptations. In what the publishers term a plaquette, traditionally a small bronze relief, but here a chapbook illustrated with reproductions from Bosch’s work, Howell explores both the meaning and effect that the artist’s works, particularly those of a more apocalyptic bent, might have on the viewer. Anthony, our not entirely reliable guide to the paintings, a self-confessed Bosch fanatic, has come to the artist’s home town of  ’s-Hertogenbosch for a rare exhibition of his work. For reasons that remain obscure, Anthony has left his wife and daughter, Angela and Helen, at home in the UK, though he’s at pains to assure us that he has their blessing, if it’s what makes him happy. This last comment hints at Anthony’s need to justify the pursuit of his own interests, interests that are not as purely artistic and intellectual as they first seem. 

On his first encounter with one of the works—The Wayfarer—Anthony has a sort of premonition, "a shimmer of light whose provenance he could not explain," that gives him the permission he needs to stray from his purposeful travels and sink "into a hedonistic stage of life." An accomplice toward that stage appears in the form of Lajla, an expert on Bosch. She offers Anthony a glimpse into the possibilities inherent in The Garden of Earthly Delights. The world of the painting stands in contrast to the mundane, sexless reality of his life with Angela, though his nightly phone calls to her, as well as specific memories which prompt moments of guilt, appear to contradict this interpretation. His supposed surprise at Angela calling him "lover," doesn’t exactly sit with his self-depiction of their relationship. 

Through keenly described scenes from different works, Howell returns again and again to contrasting what Anthony tells us about himself, with a recognition of the more earthly desires that the paintings prompt in him. Lajla, who, because of her preoccupation with the Cathars, one might expect to be sexually reticent—she makes a point of telling Anthony of their disapproval of sexual congress—responds to his latent desires by drawing him into a world where he can indulge both his pleasures and pains. The quiet, understated ending finally allows the protagonist the first real moment of insight, albeit one that comes too late. 

In the Garden follows on from Howell’s superlative collection The Study of Sleep, in exploring the work of specific painters to illuminate the struggle between our desires and delusions, and the contradictions between our false self-perceptions and those moments when we get to see ourselves as we really are.

About the reviewer
Mike O’Driscoll is a writer living in Swansea. His work has appeared in Black Static, Interzone, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous anthologies. His story ‘Sounds Like’ was adapted for a TV movie by Brad Anderson, as part of the Masters of Horror series. Mike blogs on different aspects of genre writing and film here. 

Review by Mike O'Driscoll of "The Study of Sleep and Other Stories" by Brian Howell

What a pleasant surprise to find that Brian Howell is still writing and publishing fiction. I first came across him years ago in UK literary journal Panurge, and he had at least one story in The 3rd Alternative. We both appeared in Nicholas Royle’s two-volume anthology Darklands, as well as in a best of Elastic Press anthology. That story, ‘The Tower,’ was the last time I encountered his fiction. His latest collection is a timely reminder of just how unique and obsessive—in a good way—a writer he is.

The title story, a novella, is the intricate and elliptical four-part portrait of Martin, a performance artist and aspiring writer, told from the perspective of Philip, a childhood friend, Martin himself, and Lenka, the latter’s former wife, but filtered through the narrative perspective of Julie, Philip’s wife, and herself possibly a former lover of Martin’s. The competing stories, as in Kurosawa’s film, Rashomon, both overlap and contradict each other, so that our take on Martin remains ephemeral and incomplete. This is the case even in his own narrative, where seven photographs of his abused lover, Chiara, at different stages of her life, also seem to offer an oblique commentary on his previous relationship with Lenka, which story unfolds in the novel’s third section, ‘The Decay,’ and which is itself Julie’s written interpretation of their marriage. In other hands, such intertextuality might appear an exercise in cold formalism, but Howell never loses sight of his characters, and in particular of their foibles. It’s the desire to learn the truth behind their yearnings and vanities that keeps us enthralled.

The intertextual play between the The Study of Sleep’s four parts is echoed in the remaining five tales, all of which, in their preoccupation with visual art—in particular the paintings of Vermeer, but also with cinema and the means of visual representation—seem to be engaged in a dialogue with each other. Some of them, particularly ‘The Vanishing Point,’ share the same unsettling mood as Martin’s self narrated tale in the title novella, and like it, lean more toward the macabre. Others—‘The Window’ and ‘New York Movie’—explore the extent to which art suffuses memory, how what we remember of specific works not only colours our memories, but shapes the narratives we create about our own lives. The final story, ‘The Counterfeit Smile,’ tells of Vermeer’s life, and of his search for the elusive face that has haunted him throughout his life, and of how it came to appear in one of his most famous works, ‘The Music Lesson.’ Not only is the story full of fascinating technical and biographical detail, but it offers a powerful and heartfelt representation of the artist’s motivations and desires. Just as Marquand, the protagonist of ‘Dutch Interior,’ finds himself falling into the rooms depicted in a mysterious viewing box, Howell’s elegant prose pulls us deep into the worlds of his characters and their obsessions.

About the reviewer
Mike O’Driscoll is a writer living in Swansea. His work has appeared in Black Static, Interzone, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous anthologies. His story ‘Sounds Like’ was adapted for a TV movie by Brad Anderson, as part of the Masters of Horror series. Mike blogs on different aspects of genre writing and film here.

Review by Gus Gresham of "Pictures of Yukio" by Brian Howell

While reading this chapbook short story, I had a sense of moving towards something mystical, poetic and subtly menacing. Three Japanese university students become enamoured of the work of Mishima Yukio, a writer who was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times in the 1960s. 

In the modern day setting of the story, Yukio’s shadowy face appears on the wall of a university building, its clarity subject to changes in daylight and sunlight. Pictures of Yukio is driven as much by the pictures of Yukio on the wall as it is by pictures / vignettes of the three student friends, Yutaka, Kimie and Osamu.

According to some sources, Mishima Yukio was a controversial figure, espousing right-wing views that mourned the loss of Imperial Japanese culture, and his writing was a flamboyant fusion of Japanese and Western styles. By contrast, stylistically, Howell’s prose is clear, spare and understated, but Mishima’s life and motivations are echoed in Howell’s story. There are parallel themes, including the theme of “manifesto.” The manifesto of the friends is also a call to arms for returning to the past, but this modern manifesto focuses around the idea of rejecting the globalised Western-driven trend of digital connectivity and the ills of social media that are in ascendancy in modern societies the world over.

Our narrator, Yutaka, offers an early prefiguring: “once you start texting, it becomes complicated. Misunderstandings pile on misunderstandings that can only really be sorted out in the real world of face-to-face communication.” And there are undertones of casual menace in the everyday: “I had noticed a samurai sword specialist shop adjacent to the love hotel.”

Given that Mishima Yukio was an alumnus of the university where the three friends study – and that Yukio delivered an impassioned political speech followed by ritual suicide – a reader is at once beguiled and fascinated, and wonders where this absorbing story will ultimately lead.

Pictures of Yukio is haunting and beautifully written. It lives on in the memory after reading. It made me want to know more about the inspirations behind it, and more about the author. Brian Howell lives outside Tokyo and teaches in Japan. He is also an established writer of short stories and novels. I have no hesitation recommending this forthcoming chapbook story and I’ll certainly be checking out more of Howell’s work.

 

About the Reviewer 
Gus Gresham has an MA in Creative Writing (NTU) and has worked as a mechanical engineer, construction worker, fruit picker, environmental activist, writer, English tutor, audio-book producer, medical-scenario simulator/facilitator, civil funeral celebrant, and building surveyor. He’s had short stories published in literary magazines including Brittle Star and Under the Radar, and his most recent novel, Kyiv Trance – a dark, twisty, love story and crime thriller – is available on Amazon.

Review by Laura Besley of "The Man Who Loved Kuras and Other Stories" by Brian Howell

Brian Howell’s latest collection of short stories, The Man Who Loved Kuras and Other Stories (Salt, 2022), is wonderfully weird. What can be done in a short story, which is much harder to sustain over the length of an entire novel, is to explore feelings and situations that are off-kilter, at odds with the norm. These are narratives that push the boundaries of acceptance and conjure feelings of uneasiness, sometimes even repulsion, but that also challenge views on how people choose, or are forced, to live. 

Lucie McKnight Hardy writes: ‘Sensations brought about by the manifestation of the Uncanny – dread, unease, that inescapable sensation that something is not quite right – have been said to derive from that which is familiar (homely) becoming unfamiliar (unhomely)’ (Writing the Uncanny, pp.9-10). Some of Howell’s stories start out innocent enough, like the opening of ‘Green to Blue’ or ‘The Shore’ wherein a young girl asks the main character which book he is reading. Whereas others drop more quickly into a world that is not quite as it should be. The opening line of the titular story – ‘As Ishii started out on one of his daily walks past the local daycare centre, the screams of the children sounded out’ – could’ve been a man merely taking a stroll, but for a singular word: screams. This word can, of course, be read in various ways, but to me it was immediately unsettling. 

Howell makes great use of silence and space between the characters to heighten their sense of disjointedness which in turn enhances the sense of unease in the reader. One example is from ‘The Folding Man’: ‘[Pippa] seemed not to be looking so much at her mother as into a pocket of space between them’ until a ‘chasm opened up, a resentment that cannot be filled with cheery conversation, it seemed.’ Another is a one-sided conversation in ‘The Shore’ between an American man and a young Asian girl. 

In his essay ‘What My Gland Wants,’ Adam Marek states that ‘the short story reader has the ability to suspend their disbelief to a far greater degree’ (Short Circuit, p.147). This is true in many of the stories within Howell’s collection, not least ‘The Folding Man’ wherein the main character’s skin is peeled back to reveal his organs and ‘wonderfully, no blood spilled anywhere.’

Some argue that short fiction doesn’t need any description; it is only a distraction and readers are able to imagine characters for themselves. Tobias Hill, on the other hand, likens physical character description to ‘having the salt beside you when you are cooking. You don’t need a lot of it … But it is necessary to have just enough’ (Short Circuit, p.108). This singular description of Mandy in ‘Family Tree’ is not only concise, but also serves as foreshadowing for what will later unfold: ‘She seemed concerned over little else but the doll she dragged along in the dirt. I thought how much it resembled her, with its Belisha-beacon orange hair, its staring, unseeing eyes, its fixed, reprimanding expression.’ 

Bearing in mind these elements, I feel The Man Who Loved Kuras and Other Stories, although not for everyone, is not only wonderfully weird, but also weirdly wonderful.  

    

About the reviewer

Laura Besley is the author of three collections of flash & micro fiction: (Un)Natural Elements, 100neHundred and The Almost Mothers. She is also an editor for Flash Fiction Magazine. She tweets @laurabesley.

You can read more about The Man Who Loved Kuras and Other Stories on Creative Writing at Leicester here.