In Clive Gresswell’s Shadow Reel, fragments of thought seep through consciousness like a shadow of a film documenting our waking existence. 

Like our background internal monologues, there are no chapters or verses, only thoughts of varying lengths. Yet, the ideas connect loosely to one another, with a word or phrase in one fragment often echoing something in the next. For example, on page 28, we read “map gold. etchings to the emergency rooms. elegies of doubt.” Gold is an element in fine artistry, etchings are a type of visual art, and an elegy can be written for someone who did not make it home from the emergency room. 

Some words and ideas are recurring, such as “tomato,” mentioned 62 times in the manuscript, “blue” a little over 30 times, and “metalanguage” used 33 times. Metalanguage would be words about words, a commentary on the experience or nature of reading and writing. So perhaps Shadow Reel brings us a glimpse of what comes after we read, how we meditate on certain thoughts or images after we see or hear them, when we continue to process them at a level beyond literal meaning. 

The book also carries a distinctly British sensibility, with mentions of Liverpool, Birmingham, the Chancellor, and the moors. It’s grounded in a culture, if not a specific address. 

The language is relatively complex and Gresswell uses literary devices such as alliteration: “a conglomerate of cheerless conservatives” (page 33) and “the pale puce of his postulation” (page 31) and varies syntax so that the book sounds like an experimental composition. He follows e.e. cummings’ style of avoiding initial capitals while still using periods, letting the individual fragments of thought loosely flow into one another. 

Readers can imagine Shadow Reel intoned in a crackly bass radio voice, with an emergent rhythm that seems to arise spontaneously and never becomes monotonous due to the variety of sentence lengths. It’s a voyage worth taking into the unconscious. 

Shadow Reel is available here.