If words are weapons, writers are assassins...

"Every story written is
marks upon a page
The same marks,
repeated, only
differently arranged"
Max Barry, Lexicon

We all know the power of words, that a rousing speech can raise the rebellion or give the hero time enough to foil the evil villain... We all know that words can take us to worlds which don't exist, create lovers and friends that we will never meet but we'll adore for the rest of our lives... We all know that words can wound. That hearts can be broken with just a sentence and that a well placed word will create scars that will never leave us...

So is it so hard to believe that there are words out there that can cut through all of our rational defenses, all the social programming, to our very cores? That there are words which make us totally vulnerable to suggestion, instruction and command?

You know that flutter in your stomach when you answer the phone and the line is silent but you know that someone is about to speak... There's your answer. We intuitively know that words have power and we also know there's not a damn thing we can do about it. We are so easy to Derren Brown.

Max Barry knows this and that's why Lexicon is so good.

Lexicon, (isbn 9781444764659), was published in June this year and I've been meaning to write a review for it ever since I raced through the proof copy a few months back. But something kept holding me back...the fact that it was so damn good.

Set in a world where a secret agency has harnessed the essence of language, identified the key personality types and the specific sounds that can hack each of our brains, this is a novel like nothing I've ever read. From the start it throws you in at the deep end and by the time you realise which way is up, you're already well out of your depth. And it's an immersive, obsessive read. I ate it greedily, spending an entire day off reading in bed with a near constant supply of tea and chocolate biscuits and there aren't many books which grip me like that - I think the last one before this was The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and if you read this blog regularly, you'll know exactly how I feel about that book :)

But Lexicon is something different.

It is a great read, it has a compelling plot, fully fleshed characters, ingenuity and cleverness by the bucket but there's also something else...

You know that moment when you could almost believe that the X-files is an authorised government leak? That the truth is just a scrape of the surface below the unbelievable... That there's an element of truth in the horror stories which scare us...

With Lexicon there is always an undercurrent that Barry is pulling back the curtain and giving us a glimpse, not of the wizard, but of our programming. Of the way our minds perceive and comprehend language and sound, from the unspoken command of someone saying our name, the instinctual reaction of a mother to her baby's cry, to the way the hairs on the back of our neck stand up when we hear a scream in the middle of the night. A glimpse of how words and sound manipulate...

That sounds could cut through all the bullshit in our heads and leave us vulnerable...

But Lexicon takes it one step even further... What if there were a word, a phrase that could hack everyone? That there was no defense against. What if this wasn't a new word, but a forgotten word, a word that had been with us since the beginning of us grunting and gesturing at the rock, the cave, the fire... What if this word wasn't ours, what if it had come from before... What does that mean? Where does that leave us?

This is a well crafted, incredibly easy-to-read tale that behind the romp and adventure, exotic locations and death toll, behind the curtain are a lot of Big Thoughts. Note the capitals. This is linguistic philosophy masquerading as mainstream fiction. This is subtle, compelling and essentially, this is fucking clever. And not a literary fiction, big-words-and-podium clever. This is a book which knows it's readers can be smart and still like a damn good read. A book that knows you can like Kafka and Iron Man with the same brain.

This is the kind of book that every writer wishes they could write. I know I do. In an industry where some books bludgeon heavy handedly, this is a showman with an assassins blade, this is misdirection and mass entertainment. This is Derren Brown as fiction.

Now, I might be loving Lexicon too much. I might be reading too much into it... I might be selling too hard and showing you the inside of the empty top hat...

But the best thing... The thing that's really going to bake your noodle... The only way you're going to really know whether this book is everything that I say it is... The only way you can decide for yourself is to read Lexicon.

Consider yourself Derren Browned.

Three brothers...

Somewhere on the Devon coast line, near two villages divided by a river, above a bay containing many coves and one crumbling church, there is a cluster of three pine trees. These trees are gnarled by wind and sea spray, baked and bitter from the seasons and within their roots lie the ashes of two generations of my family. And it's not the windy dark days that make me think of those trees and the remains which brush against their feathered roots. It's the days like today when the sky is clear and bleached by the sun, when every other breath almost tastes of the sea from desire and imagination, regardless of where you are. In the middle of London I could turn a corner and step into an unexpected but adored breeze which suddenly seems salty and thick with the scent of seaweed.

The summer makes me think of the bay, the trees and the sea because that was where so many of my childhood summers were spent, with my family, staying at my grandfather's caravan in the private farm/campsite called Stoke Beach. We would head down to Devon within a week of the end of the summer term and stay with my grandmother in Plymouth for a few weeks and then at Stoke Beach for anything between a week and four. I and my brother would spend weeks clambering around cliffs, swimming, turning over rocks, climbing trees and grumbling any time our parents wanted to take us away to towns or National Trust properties. We spent our summers getting roasted brown and developing the ability to walk across the gravel car park without flinching. These are some of my strongest memories of my childhood and almost my only memories of my grandfather.

He was weathered and strong, a pipe always in his mouth and we rarely saw him when he wasn't at Stoke. Between March and November he lived at the caravan, only heading back to the house he shared with my grandma once a fortnight when they met to go to the library. And before you start thinking he was an odd sort and that this was a strange way to live; my grandma had a caravan of her own, further inland, set in wooded shade beside a river on the edge of Dartmoor. And so they would spend their years, apart for most of the warm seasons and cramped together near the gas fire during the cold.

Stoke Beach had begun as an evacuation camp for children from the cities during the second world war. Both my grandparents had volunteered there, bringing along their three sons to play with the evacuees, enjoying the weather and the sea, attempting to ignore reality and the looming fear. After the war many of the children and parents had become attached to Stoke Beach and the farmer established firstly a campsite and then a caravan site in this sheltered wood enclosed cove. My father, his twin brother and his elder brother spent their summers doing exactly what I and my brother had done, making memories and friends, slowly making the sand and soil of that place as much of their genetic make up as their eye colour. It was only when the three brothers left home and found their own adventures that my grandparents sought separate caravans, my gran opting for the dappled serenity of a riverside rather than the sun bleached power of the sea.

When my grandfather died, suddenly, within a week of the doctors discovering his lungs and liver were riddled with a cancer that he had never complained about or sought attention for, my grandma took over his caravan, knowing how much her many grandchildren adored Stoke Beach. It was only as her own health failed her and she had to give up driving that she gave up the caravan, a decision that we all understood, but that caused an unexpected ache in many of us. It was the end of an era. The end of a stream of generations who found solace and peace on that ragged coast.

My grandfather was the first to have his ashes scattered beneath the three pine trees overlooking the bay above Stoke Beach. I can remember that no matter where you were in that bay, unless you were squeezing through the few strange pock marked natural tunnels cut into the cliffs by the sea, where ever you were you could see those trees. Like calm sentinels on the horizon, or three weather beaten old men, sticks in hands and pipes in mouths, standing in silence and enjoying the view.

My father's twin brother died suddenly at 55 and he joined his father on that horizon, followed by my grandmother and then my father, who died five years and two days ago. I and my husband took my father's ashes to the trees on a bright November morning, scattering them beside his parents and his brother, the breeze snatching at his remains almost as if it were trying to shake his hand and welcome him home.

Stoke Beach was in our family's blood and it always seemed fitting that they should sink into that soil at the end of their adventures.

On summer days like this I think of that cliff top and I can see them standing there together in the shade of the trees, looking out over the bay at the grey blue sea, foam kissed waves drifting lazily towards the sand. I know they mostly stand in silence, admiring the view, my father and grandfather occasionally pointing out a bird or a boat and passing the binoculars to each other, pushing their glasses up on their foreheads, their faces wrinkling with squinting concentration.

The third brother passed at the start of this year and at some point I'll be taking his ashes to that cliff top and returning him to his brothers. Three trees, three brothers. It was almost as if nature always know that this was going to be home for them and left a mark so that they could find it.

As the sun sets tonight, I'll be thinking of how the stars always looked so bright at Stoke Beach. How without street lights and civilisation the sky was so clear you could see the milky way and watch the satellites skipping across the curve of the heavens. I'll be thinking of three brothers reunited and enjoying the view.

"And miles to go before I sleep..."

The door slammed behind me as I walked away, deliberately not running. People notice running, you run from a burning building or a body. Walking implies normalcy, purpose, perhaps even a plan.

My hands curled into fists and I tried to shake the thinking out of my head. Digging around in my pockets I dragged my MP3 player out and plugged the headphones in, hitting shuffle and turning the volume up to ear ringing levels.

As I walked the buildings fell away unnoticed behind me, my eyes were on the floor, chasing concrete to the beat of the noise in my head. My feet found one of the long tracks out of the city and the grey turned to a flattened gravel track edged with green, the shadows of trees and tall nettles dappling the path.

I could feel the twitch of thoughts tugging for attention, buzzing like wasps behind the noise and I closed my eyes for a few steps, walking the straight path listening only to the music, feeling the rhythm of my muscles stretching, the thud of the ground jarring up through my feet and into my body.

I walked like this for hours, eyes closed for a few seconds, then open to the sunlight through the leaves, closed and just feeling the sensation of movement and sound. My eyes were closed as the first patter of rain hit my skin and opening them it felt like I had been walking blind for hours, the sky had turned from blue to grey, the air cooler against my skin.

I quickened my step as the rain became heavier, turning a corner and finding an overpass looming over the path. The bridge was dense and stubborn, standing squat and astride a gathering darkness. I kept my rhythm as I approached, goosebumps skittering across my skin as I walked into the shadows and approached the other side, slowing to a reluctant stop. Above me the heavens rumbled and standing still, watching the rain batter the leaves and bounce from the path, my legs trembled from the sudden immobility. I began to pace, crossing back and forth the width of the shadow, slowly becoming aware that my face was wet from tears and not the rain. Feeling something in my chest clenching with the fear of thought, the fear of self.

The scream came someone I didn't recognise, a person composed from anger and fear, their voice ripping through the shadows and echoing until my throat felt raw. Shouting, raving at the voices in my head, screaming out at no one and everyone, alone in the darkness and hoping for more than an echo in reply. The screams finally fell into silence.

On bloody knees beneath the overpass, beyond my panting breath, I could hear the rain slow and the distant tinny chimes coming from the headphones lying on the floor. In that pocket between the weather and the world, there was an unexpected stillness. A silence between thoughts. A clean ache in my head and heart.

I had outdistanced thought. Somehow I had placed enough distance between me and my brain, that it had become lost in the storm, followed the wrong path and slipped in the mud.

I took a deep shuddering breath and in the silence of not thinking knew I had to run, to put miles between me and it, leave a false trail for it to follow, no breadcrumbs for a safe return to the hollow of my head. And so I ran, from burning building, from body, from truth and pain and loss, out into the woods and across fields, doubling back and onto streets, hoping to lose myself, my thoughts forever in a frantic flee.

I finally slowed, gasping, clutching at the stitch in my side, and I found I recognised a corner, a building here and there. There were the same shops that sold me bread and salt, the faces I did not recognise which seemed so familiar. The life that I lived and yet felt divided from.

There was my home, my haven.

My duplicitous feet had found their own way. Even without direction here I was. What hope had I of out distancing my mind, when my body knew where I would be?

I pulled the keys from my pocket and opened the door, letting it creak shut behind me, shutting out car and road, life and lies. As I stood in the cool darkness I could feel the world catching up with me. My memories and thoughts rushing towards me like a tide, like I was a black hole within terraced suburbia.

I had come home, to all that I was and would ever be.

I steeled myself against the sensation, like preparing to be punched in the gut. Stomach tensed and body hunched, expecting the blow. I had come home and nothing had changed. I was still me.

I was still me. 

Unedited and cliched, but it is what it is... A bad day, in a bad week and a walk helped me not think and I considered the idea of actually outdistancing self... However, ultimately you always have to come home, hopefully stronger. I wrote this to clear the air in the empty space between my ears and I've posted it unedited because it fulfilled its function in creation.

We all have miles to go before we sleep, all we can hope for is company along the way, a gentle breeze at our back and something which feels like home in the end.