Copyright © 2014 by Mark Lamprell
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First published in 2013 by The Text Publishing Company, Australia
Typeset in Granjon 13/18 by J & M Typesetting
Cover design by WH Chong
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lamprell, Mark.
The full ridiculous : a novel / Mark Lamprell.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-61902-394-9 (eBook)
1. Life change events—Fiction. 2. Middle-aged men—Fiction. 3. Families—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.A547445F95 2014
813'.6—dc23
2013044836
SOFT SKULL PRESS
An imprint of COUNTERPOINT
1919 Fifth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
for Klay
a love song of sorts, my darling girl.
Halfway through a ten-kilometre run, you have yet another premonition that you’re hit by a car while jogging so you decide to outwit the fates by changing course, heading down Hastings Road instead of up it. Rather than risk the usual dash across the intersection, you wait at the pedestrian crossing for a sleek green four-wheel drive to pass on your right. Summer is toppling into autumn but it’s still hot and you wipe the sweat from your forehead with the back of your hand. Looking left, you see an old blue sedan approaching and make eye contact with the driver who is lit by a flash of early-morning sun. You stride confidently onto the crossing and almost reach the other side of the road when, out of the corner of your left eye, you see something blue.
The blue sedan.
It’s less than a body length away, and it’s not stopping.
Time slows, just like in the movies, which is ironic because you work in the movies. Well, not in the movies, around the movies; you write about movies, ‘clever’ features poking fun at filmmakers who may not be creative geniuses but at least they’ve had a go which is more than you can say for some joggers
which is why you have this self-loathing thing going
which is why you overeat
which makes you overweight
which gives you borderline high