Former lead singer of The Smiths Morrissey’s first foray into writing fiction has seen his novel, List of the Lost, released in the UK and Ireland today. The book is the musician and activist’s first since his autobiography Autobiography was published in 2013.
The novel, set in Boston during the 1970s, tells the story of a cursed relay team. To get a better sense of what the novel is about, try grasping at the straws the author offered in an interview with True to You:
"The theme is demonology ... the left-handed path of black magic. It is about a sports relay team in 1970s America who accidentally kill a wretch who, in esoteric language, might be known as a Fetch ... a discarnate entity in physical form. He appears, though, as an omen of the immediate deaths of each member of the relay team. He is a life force of a devil incarnate, yet in his astral shell he is one phase removed from life. The wretch begins a banishing ritual of the four main characters, and therefore his own death at the beginning of the book is illusory."
Morrissey's first novel, List of the Lost
The musician’s autobiography was met will a cool reception regarding his prose style – as well as his furious descriptions of women – and the bad news for The Smiths’ singer is the reception of List of the Lost is equally poor.
In The Guardian, the first publication to offer a critical take of the novel, Michael Hann actively recommends readers resist the urge to buy the book, describing it as “an unpolished turd of a book, the stale excrement of Morrissey’s imagination.”
List of the Lost “appears to be unedited,” Hann adds, “the curse of the writer whose commercial clout is stronger than their publisher’s willpower.”
But one positive to take from Hann’s review is that Morrissey’s novel could well be the one to beat when it comes to claiming an award from the Literary Review, which annually bestows an honour on the writer who has committed the most ham-fisted description of sex to the page. To quote the passage in question:
“Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and pulled at each other in a dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone.”
Over on The Daily Beast, London editor Nico Hines was troubled by Morrissey’s treatment of women, describing it as “repulsive.”
Calling Morrissey's female characters "dismissively sketched," Hines pulls a quote from the novel which he thinks presents the author's disconcerting attitude to women and their sexual identity. Morrissey writes:
“Although the publicly confessed lust of the man must always be made to seem ridiculous and prepubescent, the lust of the woman is at first childlike and desperate—as if they know there is something about which they know nothing, and this itch takes on the aggressive."
List of the Lost is available in book shops and online from today.
