re:mote voices

Title: Days Between Station
Author: Steve Erickson
Publisher: Owl Books

Steve Erikson is a write who was recommended to me some time ago. Of course I thought of Steven Erikson, which is an entirely different proposal. From there I did a search, and came across as extract from Days Between Stations, which I enjoyed. However, when I set about actually trying to find material by Steve Erikson I discovered that he is not what you would call readily available in the UK. Luckily I recently came across an American import copy of Days Between Stations in a local second hand shop, so I picked that up.

Lauren meets Jason when she is 17, and without much ado they fall in love and get married. But Jason isn’t around much, as a world-class cyclist he is always disappearing for races. He is also unfaithful to Lauren; as a result of his latest betrayal she goes a little bit mad. She has a hazy encounter with a man in a blue coat, but afterwards she can’t remember it at all.

Michel wakes up one morning in Paris, with no recollection of who he is, or how he got there. The only things he has are his blue coat and his passport. Returning to America where his passport says that he is from, he moves into a building in LA. Where the woman upstairs is the first person he seems to recognise.

The basic core plot from there is a love triangle between Lauren, her unfaithful husband Jason and the neighbour Michel. But that is a description that doesn’t really sum up what happens in Days Between Stations. There is a good chunk of the book flashes back to Michel’s grandfather, and an epic film that he made. The lives of all the characters entwine throughout, little elements recurring and having an impact.

There is a somewhat apocalyptic tone to Days Between Stations. Over the course of the narrative LA is buried by brutal sand storms, Paris becomes so cold that buildings are burnt on a daily basis, and as spring comes around the canals of Venice dry out. Add to that regular power cuts and the increasing difficulty with travel to round out the sensation. With that, it is perhaps unfortunate that Erikson ends up dating the novel – though he doesn’t give us a date for the present, he does take us back to the end of the world war one, in such a way that places the body of the work in the 1980s.

The feel of Days Between Stations, the dreamy kind of end of the world scenario reminds of the main novels by Kathleen Ann Goonan, and one wonders whether she has been particularly influenced by Erikson. This side of things also invites comparisons with the environmental themes of Kim Stanley Robinson, particularly his most recent work 40 Signs Of Rain, which warns of deteriorating weather conditions.

Days Between Stations also has odd little undercurrents. Elements of the weird woven into the daily. The kind of thing that I am particularly partial to – the way that Lauren has an affinity for cats, the way in which the trio live in a street which can be found on no map, even the way the cyclists in Venice vanish to haunt the night. To a degree this side of things reminds me of Jeanette Winterson, particularly her novel Passion – which like Days Between Stations spends some time in both Paris and Venice.

As a novel Days Between is elusive, flitting through a sense of unreality, through tangents and obsessions with film or the colour blue. Layering stories of family, of twins, illusion and isolation into a novel about relationships.