The Pathology of Graphology

di David Milnes (Autore)

What Tradition Books, 2019

The Times Literary Supplement described David Milnes' writing as "bleak but impressive". The Pathology of Graphology is the bleakest and most impressive dark comedy you will read this year. By the age of 38, Geoff Osmah, a Samoan immigrant, has fallen from semi-skilled labourer on north London building sites, to car valet for low-budget cleaning agencies. Geoff's voice is from the lower depths of Brexitland. After he is snubbed by the aging dj, Pete Moran, on Moran's Your Call! phone-in, Geoff decides to throw in the chamois for good. He dresses up for suicide and takes a train to Brighton, where he plans to jump off Telscombe Cliffs. But he can't do it. He backs away. Distracted and shamed by fear, he slopes off to slake his thirst at a Brighton beach bar, and it is here he meets the celebrated graphologist, Fraser Davis, who was once a regular guest and raconteur on Your Call! Davis is trying to sell his memoirs of life at the fringes of radio celebrity to the drunks in The Belvedere. No one is buying. At the end of the evening, Davis rolls the stupefied Osmah and disappears. In the morning Osmah tracks Davis down to his hotel, kidnaps him at knife-point, and escorts him first class back to London - "We travel first class all the way" - where he uses him to gain entrance to Pete Moran's Kensington apartment. From here, Geoff has some vague plan to execute a robbery. Moran is recovering from minor surgery and seems defenceless and vulnerable, but he insists most energetically and vehemently and convincingly that the Fraser Davis whom Osmah has brought to his apartment is not the real Fraser Davis, the celebrated graphologist, at all. There are triangular arguments on this question which end when Moran successfully persuades Osmah he can have everything he owns - there is no need to rob him or kill him - because he, Moran, is terminally ill anyway, but before he dies he would like to make some reparation to Osmah, whose fortunes he readily admits he destroyed by snubbing him on Your Call! Once Osmah is lulled and subdued by this bargain, Moran creates an opportunity to fell and kill both Osmah and Davis (or the impostor Davis) with his aluminium hospital crutch. It doesn't work. Osmah overpowers Moran and kills him instead. This is an accident Osmah deeply regrets, and from here his life spirals out of control, as Davis - who Geoff is now certain is not who he says he is - turns the calamity of Moran's death to his own advantage. He drugs and manipulates Osmah so that he can both abuse him sexually and rob him of Moran's estate as well. But Osmah, whom Davis treats more or less as an animal by now, proves difficult to put down or destroy forever.

• Autore: David Milnes
• Editore: What Tradition Books
• Anno: 2019
• Rilegatura: Paperback / softback
• Pagine: 250 p.
• Dimensioni: 203 x 127 mm
• EAN: 9781916183209

Testo in English