Beneath The Ground and Lost and Found - A new review of an old book...

Some time ago I contributed a short story called Lost and Found for Joel Lane's Beneath The Ground anthology, which after some delays was published in 2003 by Alchemy Press. It remains one of my favourite short stories as it references a couple of subjects that have long been close to my heart: the music of Nick Drake and the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. To be able to merge the two into some kind of cohesive piece of fiction is one of my proudest achievements. Sometimes you look back on old work and you recall where and who you were when you wrote it, and see shortcomings both in your life and your work, but I think Lost and Found still holds up even now. It being for Joel Lane, who inspired and encouraged me right from the start, I felt an obligation to give him the absolute best that I could, and I think I did.
I bring all this up purely because I was pointed toward a recent review of Beneath the Ground by D.F.Lewis here

Lost and Found
This substantial story continues the river of people on the London Underground from the previous story, each story complementing and enlightening the other. I can't do this story justice. It is teeming with images that coalesce: an obsession with the London Underground finally bearing fruit as a religious epiphany with a presence that overhangs us all as well as subsuming us; a subtle narrative trick of narrators narrating being narrated in various layers of collusiveness and non-collusiveness; relationships both sibling and sexual; loss, failure, amputation, Leonard Cohen... but I was listening to Goldfrapp's 'Felt Mountain' duing the reading of this story and it imbued everything with a gorgeous sadness... "'It was like a cathedral,' he wrote. Amongst the stalagmite basins and the stalactite pillars, he could hear the sound of something like prayer. He was terrified and in awe." There are letters, too, a stack of letters. This story would not have worked in the email age. I feel as if I cannot fix this story in the kiln. It's far too diffusive - like music straight into the veins. Like trying to shape origami from air (to pinch an image from the story). Or as if trying to rediscover a place... "'It was one of those anonymous East End streets,' he wrote. 'Concrete gardens. Children playing in the road. A chip shop at one end, an off-licence at the other. It was the kind of place you'd never find twice.'"

It's nice after all these years to see that people are still discovering the anthology and the story. Strange too at this point while I'm about to start working on a short horror story that feels like it'll have a similar 'vibe' to Lost And Found. Perhaps someone's trying to tell me something...