Clive Gilson 
Songs Of Bliss 

Just how far will a father go to protect his daughter, especially when his ‘protection’ is so fundamentally flawed?

Billy Whitlow, one time ‘Don of Doo Wop’, has survived his days of drink, drugs and groupies, settling now into a more peaceful life centred on his blossoming seventeen year old daughter Bex. Revising for her ‘A’ Levels, Bex visits Billy one Easter but the longed-for simplicity of father-daughter happiness is shattered one night in a local nightclub.

Billy’s world becomes one of questions; Why is his daughter in a drug induced coma? Who put her in that state? How in the name of Hell is he going to make them pay?

Clive’s stories are linked by recurring themes of urban and future decay – splintered glass, dust motes and cracked plaster; the loss of loved ones, of the ability to remember; black and white movies of the mind; shafts of golden light shattered by war; haunted memories and the night darks. There is a poetic lilt to the narrative, that delights in the minutiae of observation, bringing the mundane into the spotlight, giving it a meaning and beauty that is mostly lost on us busy ones; there is the terror of the ordinary, the shadow in the midday sun; and then there is the humour: sharp, cynical, painfully astute. Clive Gilson’s stories reverberate in the mind, long after they’ve been read. They connect us in their telling, because we relate to these deep, dark moments of human emotion that make us who we are.

‘I have edited Clive Gilson’s books for over a decade now – he’s prolific and can turn his hand to many genres: poetry, short fiction, contemporary novels, folklore and science fiction – and the common theme is that none of them ever fails to take my breath away. There’s something in each story that is either memorably poignant, hauntingly unnerving or sidesplittingly funny.’

Lorna Howarth, The Write Factor

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