Author: Joel Lane
Publisher: Influx
Paperback
One of our books of the year 2024!
Emz says: Joel Lane’s The Lost District is a collection of short stories set amongst the industrial wastelands and grim council estates of Birmingham. They each offer striking moments of the uncanny, drifting through scenes of masochistic horror, nauseating erotica, shocking trauma and existential dread. What I found most uncanny were his descriptions of the weather which perfectly match my memory of growing up in Birmingham - too hot, too cold, raining, sleeting, overcast; miserable. But now I realise that it wasn’t the sky’s fault, it was what was underneath it. These stories made me tragically nostalgic for the depressing and, at the same time, exciting landscape of abandoned warehouses and empty carparks. It made me wonder whether Birmingham was still like that? But perhaps what I saw wasn’t as important as how I saw it.