Edwin Stevens – Seagulls (Very Bon Books, 2020)
Seagulls is Stevens’ debut novel, a sordid glimpse of an imagined North Walean life, depressing and disgusting but somehow magical, and a version of Pontins quite unfamiliar to that place you may have visited as a child. While I was reading I picked a scab on my ear until it bled and got blood on page 74. It seemed quite fitting. Bumming, wrestling, circumcision, pubey chips, Crosby, Stills, and Nash – it really has it all. Stevens’ capacity for evocative description and dreamlike scene-setting is impeccable. By the end, I was part-aroused, part-nauseated, part-wistful, part-drunk with excitement for his next work. Stevens is my favourite scumbag angel, his first book a perfect flash of his gross, rotting, and beautiful head, and I hope that his hilarious and vivid voice will soon be in your head, too.
– Blair James
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