Punch and Judy World

If you can’t see Mr Punch, that means he’s right behind you. Now. Don’t you dare look around.

Elements of fantasy and mild horror, dark comedy and perverse optimism, mingle in these bizarre stories. Make sense of them at your peril. They are linked by such surreal figures as Tommy Flyblow, a philosophical tramp, and Mr Punch, a grinning psychopath who breaks into the ’real’ world from childhood nightmares and the English seaside.

Transgender bohemians, a Paraguayan giant anteater, Pepper’s ghost, Jenny Greenteeth and a raving postmodernist street preacher could also turn up. Even bird-headed men seem at home in this warped but recognisable view of our appalling times.

This book is for anyone not afraid to wonder what lies beyond the spectacle of normality. If you have a clue what’s happening, you can explain it to such baffled observers as Tommy Flyblow, Cute Max and, of course, Caroline the dustbin man. Why not try your luck with it now?

Adam Wilderness assembled this collection of related stories about outcasts, beggars and bohemians during a summer of loafing and tramping. The last piece was finished in a bivouac near Stallington’s Clyce in the English West Country, Ordnance Survey grid reference ST278408, toward sunset on a cloudless August day, with the light fading from the Quantock Hills and the only sound the trickle of the Cannington Brook as it toppled over the sluice into the River Parrett.

Adam is a self-taught author of offbeat fiction. He is deeply mistrustful of anyone who claims to know the meaning of life. He briefly worked as a seaside Punchman himself, so he has some insight into puppets, nightmares and the haunted Unconscious. Yes, he lives in a Punch and Judy World. But don’t we all?

Search ’Adam Wilderness’ on Amazon for a complete list of this author’s e-books and print editions. He wishes you success with your own life’s work, whatever it may be, and hopes that you manage to complete the particular corner of Creation that the Master of the Universe left unfinished for you.