The Nutter in the Shrubbery

John Davies

Davies’ Britain is a place of double-edged beauty: playful but profound, mundane and yet strange. The Nutter is a stealthy observer who seems to embody this contradictory condition, peering out from leafy territory well beyond the neatly tended lawn of mere national 'quirkiness'. You’d be unwise to leave your kids in his company, but equally he may just be a harmless onlooker; a witness to the more lurid secrets of those who band about accusations of 'Pervert!'

These are the words of the petrol station, patio and outmoded fitted kitchen, but with the power to unearth the hidden narratives which begin just a stone’s throw away from the suburban surface. Knotty problems of identity and relationships run throughout the collection, from the shock consequence of 'Adultery', to the vividly rendered 'Campion', where the eponymous flower becomes the crux of a briefly glimpsed psychodrama. The ghosts of the maimed Fisher King and of the discredited medical theory of 'maternal impression' hang heavy over this vision of Britain, but the darkness is always alive with humour, as for instance in Davies’ hilarious imaginings of the voices of sheep and rats towards the end of the pamphlet.

ISBN 978-1-906309-00-8
£6 plus £3 p&p