![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jameslawless.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/brown-brick.jpg?resize=100%2C150&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhy does the mysterious Mr Washington slowly demolish a suburban house? \u2018A surreal blend of black humour, metaphor and gritty but exquisitely executed urban squalor, which for all its ingenuity never loses the soul of its story.\u2019 The Sunday Business Post.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018The slow demolition of a house by the mysterious Mr Washington in James Lawless\u2019s Brown Brick becomes a fitting metaphor for the destructive drug addiction of its central characters.\u2019 Opening extract:<\/p>\n The street lights are coming on as Mr Washington, hatted, coated, gloved and sporting his goatee, marches towards me whistling, with my brown brick under his left oxter. His right arm swings a brolly giving a rhythm to his walk. Coming into view with his beady eyes I want to talk to him, to confront him to get my brown brick back. \u2018Excuse me, Mr Washington….\u2019 I say but he sidesteps; the eyes keep looking ahead; they don\u2019t see me. The side movement was just an impulse like a radar message telling him, Object approaching. What is that tune of his fading, on the tip of my tongue, familiar like something seductive drawing one in? Concentrate, I say to myself on what is in hand, or rather what is in head, which is the thudding remembrancer of the near death experience of the night before. \u2018Don\u2019t mix your drinks,\u2019 Heno had said (how many times had he warned me?). One beer, two beers, whiskey wine and brandy. How many whiskeys? Memory is a blur. \u2018You get so fucking blotto,\u2019 Heno tells me. I mix up things. The wrong day, people sometimes. My thoughts, my speech come slow now like sludge oozing out of my mind. I don\u2019t socialise. I\u2019m a homebird, a non-recovering alcoholic. I don\u2019t need to mix, except for my drinks of course, not when I have Heno. He needs to get out from the house every now and then. I don\u2019t mind. I understand. In affairs of the heart, one has to play along with the whim of the other.<\/p>\n Available in Kindle at https:\/\/amzn.to\/2MUfuFy (UK) or https:\/\/amzn.to\/2MVwJpR (US) and other devices at (Smashwords) https:\/\/bit.ly\/2Wki36W<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why does the mysterious Mr Washington slowly demolish a suburban house? \u2018A surreal blend of black humour, metaphor and gritty but exquisitely executed urban squalor, which for all its ingenuity never loses the soul of its story.\u2019 The Sunday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3349"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3358,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3349\/revisions\/3358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAnne Fogarty, professor of James Joyce Studies at UCD in the Irish Times.<\/em><\/p>\n