Eternity

ETERNITY concludes the long series of tales, novellas and novels by John Fraser as he explores the multitude of forms of human life - outside the canon and within, clinging to unreliable memories, confessions by the innocent and forgetful, rhodomontades by the marginal and discarded. Sometimes the hold on life seems lost, always precarious. It's not an easy ride - transferring from donkey, horse and Lamborghini to camel, dromedary and - mostly - foot and bus. Always central, always traduced, and disappointed. In After Life Nietzsche has a walk-on part, though one can hear Marx - old Karl - scribbling in the wings. Here and back again - as in music, so in life and afterwards.

Shards is a kind of memoir - a scramble of memories by the senile, and then the chivvying by new protagonists to whom the past and present must be junked.

Caving shows how our fumble with reality, disaster and survival provides us with enough uncertainty to hazard a fresh through - naturally, of liar dice. The whole is unpalatable, for sure - does it assist us to be modest, circumspect? Or quite the opposite.