Review: ‘Parallax Groove’ by Michael Loughrey
Gentle readers are urged to approach Parallax Groove with caution, beginning with the fact the book’s back cover copy proclaims that these fabulist stories comprise “fiction free from the straightjacket of realism.” Readers of nature poetry, beach fiction and sweet bedtime romances will discover that a little bit of this book goes a long way (perhaps too far).
Literary aficionados attracted to dangerous, and perhaps life threatening, adventure reading will find everything (and perhaps more) that they can possibly want within the realm of dazzling wordplay, clever references, and unrestrained, profane (and possibly grotesque) incidents and imagery taunting them on the pages blisteringly occupied with Loughrey’s fourteen stories.
If you cannot laugh (and perhaps marvel) at the characters and plots from the positively purple “Illustration No. 8″ to the blacker than black “Omega, maybe,” then you will weep for the state of a world that can be so accurately, word-in-cheek satirized by such stores. (The word “such” is not meant to imply there are any other stories on the planet remotely like those in Parallax Groove.)
Perhaps we’re doomed and this collection is our last hurrah. The opening words of “Omega, maybe” begin a cautionary tale: “And it came to pass that The End came and went. the unwavering cycle of hours, minutes and seconds of the final countdown as monotonous, neutral and unstoppable as they had always been whilst calibrating Man’s plodding passage through times good or bad.”
En route to “Omega, maybe,” we experience “Original sin,” “Still life with bacteria” and “Reclining nude with machete.” Readers addicted to the high of well executed fictional extremes should jump into the wild surf of Loughrey’s nightmares and/or enchantments and let the undertow of his words carry them wherever they will.
You’ll drown if you fight it. Otherwise, what a ride!
Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of contemporary fantasy novels, including “The Seeker,” “The Sailor” and “The Betrayed.”
