![]() ![]() Snapper details the relentless disintegration of a relationship that has begun after a road crash: ‘I was holding a bag of oxtail on Green Street at Upton Park when the accident happened.’ Cronenberg’s Crash came to mind as I read this story. ![]() It’s only at the end that we find out there have been a ‘series of sexually motivated disappearances’ and that the woman is not all she seems. Loneliness itself becomes a character in Footer where a woman succumbing to ‘the feeling of being worshipped, to a delicious, deviant unspooling attached to a man’s tongue flicking between her toes’ dates a series of foot fetishists. He was cursed.’ The story builds to a shocking conclusion where his mother is forced to an act of savagery to make him socially acceptable. In Animal Parts, the first story in this collection, Henri is born in Denmark with a long, grey tail, but it’s not until he is subject to months of graphic bullying that he realises ‘His mother had lied. Set mainly in London, but with a few further afield these are narratives to dip into and enjoy. Strange and unexpected elements of nightmare and magic merge with everyday urban life and heighten the predominant themes of loneliness, alienation and mental breakdown. Speak Gigantular is a fascinating collection of surreal, and sexually charged short stories from Irenosen Okojie. ![]()
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