The seat had been moulded to the contours of another body and it felt strange underneath him. The key was in the ignition with a metal loop hanging from it from which depended in turn three other keys to doors he would never go through.
–from “The Quarry” by Damon Galgut.
I really like the image of keys that open doors that he will never go through; keys that will never again be used. Do keys with no doors (a.k.a. “purpose”) cease to be “keys” and become something else?
Africa. Summer. A murder, a fire, a circus. Dark and brooding. Slim, concise. Lots of solitude and alone-ness, some chosen, some not. Identities stolen, crimes misattributed, things concealed, things admitted. Some longer chapters broken up by many short and choppy others. Lots of dust and heat and listlessness.
Sometimes confusing pronoun usage (purposely I think). Often left to the reader’s interpretation which he “he” is. At one point, something happened to a “he” that, I thought, had to be one of three certain “he” people. Yet if I interpreted later chapters correctly, it couldn’t have been any of those three it happened to. So to whom? (And at one point, the book said “Ho” when I’m pretty sure it meant “He”. Otherwise, one of the “he” characters was named “Ho” but, if you ignore that, we don’t ever find out that particular dude’s name (we do know the others) and pretty sure we’re not meant to so I think it must have been a misprint.)
Had read a previous Galgut “The Good Doctor” from the Booker short list a few years back and if you search this page for “Galgut” you can see my brief comments.
1) Hiccups and
2) Hives.
But thankfully NOT Hickeys, although there was a time…