Synopsis
Like a toboggan of wolves who have eaten their driver, The Solex Brothers rushes blindly through the forest, drawing on the tropes and archetypes of folk tales, parables, political manifestos, philosophical tracts and grammar. Unlike a toboggan of wolves, The Solex Brothers explores the fate of the individual – albeit a rather feeble individual – and of personal responsibility in a culture of absurd, inexorable forces. Farce navigating towards moral absolution in narratives at once Fauvist and Baroque, expunging the twee with a reformist's remorseless vigour; cherishing its influences with a poststructuralist’s vertical rigour; and, at times, chasing its tail with a schoolboy’s reductive snigger. Like a toboggan of wolves who are beginning to regret having set-upon and eaten their driver, the world of “The Solex Brothers” is funny, sad and irretrievably lost
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About the Author
Luke Kennard is the author of four volumes of poetry and two pamphlets. He lectures in creative writing at the University of Birmingham.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Scarecrow
I kissed the scarecrow: the scarecrow was cold and inert and tasted of sawdust. It was damn silly. Abelard took the photographs and advised me as to how I should kiss the scarecrow — with a hand on its shoulder, for instance.
After the shoot I purchased an Avian Guide from an unmanned stall, placing a note in a rusty can. The guide began:
Every bird that flits across our path contains a pea-sized brain which the bird uses for navigation, muscle control, detection of predators and tweeting.
On its way to my pocket a ten pence piece glinted in the moonlight. I checked the date (1992) and the tiny but unmissable chink one micron to the left of the Queen’s earring. This very coin had turned up in my change during most — if not all — moments of significance in my life to date.
I went to sit by the river to reflect on what its arrival might portend on this occasion, but was immediately seized, bound hand and foot and carried into town. ‘Like scarecrows, do you?’ said the grubby-faced men.
During my trial the judge’s contact microphone kept losing power. ‘Foul … Unnatural … Halcyon … Porous …’ he said.
Next day they attached me to a post in the middle of an oceanic cornfield and left me for dead. A crow landed on my shoulder and whispered, ‘You do realise, old thing, that we’re not actually the least bit scared of you?’
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