Review of Wailing Madness Shame and Death by W. Gavin

A mysterious book. With no description on the back, and only a few hints in the product description on Goodreads, and no author profile, and no previous works by the author to compare it to, one has no choice but to leap in blindly.

And it ends up being another dependably enjoyable read from the micro-publisher Corona/samizdat, based in Slovenia.
The author is British, judging solely by the spelling of certain words. Alternating main characters introduce us to a loosely related cast. A boy seeing a psychologist, actively avoiding the demons haunting him from his family’s past. A mother trying to keep her tenuous family together. A father pretending his past didn’t exist. Nothing is as it seems at first. Through poetic passages, which forsake punctuation, unreeling in a stream of descriptive bravado, contrasted by long dialogue sections, reminiscent of modernist texts, a desperation is intermingled with elegant despair. The ins and outs of a dynamic revenge plot is expounded through psychologically rich passages, evoking every level of pathos and frustration. They will reap what they sow. To what lengths will they go to inhabit their denial. The struggles of the several characters parallel one another, depicting the multi-layered confines of their self-created prisons.
A heart-felt, but brutal book, unstinting in its portrayal of a ruined lifestyle all-too common in our era. Taking place in the nineties, it left a haunting impression. We all have one or more family members who go down a destructive path, insisting on self-sabotaging their futures despite the assistance, support and intervention of concerned family units. Perhaps we have been those people at some point in our lives.
It would’ve benefited from another pass through to catch a decent number of typos. On the whole it’s well-written, powerful, surprising, and carefully orchestrated. The scenes have weight and maturity, though the mindsets of the characters can be aggravating for those who have known people in dire straits, who have tied their own nooses and nipped at the hands that reach out for them.
I’d read more by this author, though it’s unclear whether more will ever appear.