"Wyrd and Other Derelictions" Book Review

Adam L.G. Nevill is brilliant when it comes to describing something on the page that you can truly see in your mind. In my long-time favorite novel, Last Days, his detailed illustration of a particular triptych painting had me searching the internet for a true-life copy; I entirely believed it was a real painting upon which the book was based.

In his latest experiment (his own words), Wyrd and Other Derelictions, Nevill chooses to immerse into description entirely, leaving a narrator or characters behind. Each chapter is gloriously specific and precise, but as the author himself wonders, is this successful? It’s certainly interesting, but is it entertaining?

Not entirely. As I love the writer’s work, I enjoyed dipping a toe into this exercise. Wyrd hits the target of a lingering sense of dread and fear; the reader standing upon our ruined planet after an unnamed supernatural event. Watching the last of the corpses snatched away, the new life forms establishing their foothold in our homes and land, the curiosity of what happened couched within overall hopelessness and sorrow.

Nevill explains in the afterward he was inspired to create this world after visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau; the hopelessness and agonizing sorrow make complete sense after that experience. During a crowded visit, he couldn’t make a serious emotional connection with what had happened there. Only when he visited Birkenau alone on a quiet day was the heaviness of our collective shame allowed to drop down and create a suffocating, angry, futile feeling.

Approaching the short stories from that perspective, they make sense and are successful to that end. As an entertaining piece, it’s not as successful.

Without a character or singular plot to push urgency and structure, the novel begins to drag. There are absolutely pinpoints of action that are scary as ****, but overall there’s no sense of whether the reader should be worried, or urgent, or relaxed. It gets frustrating to slowly meander over grassy mountain walkways while spying human and animal viscera spread in neat piles.

As a reader, I think I would check this out from the library rather than purchasing it, but for authors or writers, I think this study is extremely useful. I immediately recommended it to a playwright after reading it; she had mentioned goals of specificity in setting her scenes and I couldn’t think of anything on the earth that’s more useful Wyrd to learn just how many things one can think about creating a universe.

It’s not dull; it’s not fierce. It’s not easy to describe, but Wyrd and Other Derelictions is worth a look.