Translated by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg, published Lolli Editions 2021; Danish publication 2017
I’m sat on the plane for my penultimate flight of this week of intense/intensive/frequent travelling, en route (on rooty, as they say) to Mumbai, which I will visit for under 24 hours. I’m sure that’s enough time to experience one of the world’s biggest cities! (That’s obviously a joke, I’m sure it’s not.)
I read Adorable – another beautifully presented book from Lolli Editions (a rare indie press that I’m yet to hear any negative rumours about (I don’t know if that’s because I’m no longer scene-y enough to get told rumours, if I’m moments away from someone explaining how Lolli is awful or if – least likely, let’s be honest – there’s nothing negative to be said about the London-based publisher) – a couple of days ago, mostly in a single sitting as I ate yet another thali in yet another tourist trap (ish) restaurant (i.e. a restaurant where a full meal (if you can consider an alcohol-free meal “full”, which I can, actually, sure, yes, actually, I can, I guess, sure, let’s say I can) cost me almost an entire four pounds).
The novel is split into four parts of very differing sizes – one part is only two pages and basically a prose poem, one part is widely spaced and empty-space filled prose that deals frankly, engagingly and emotively with ageing, with parenthood, with bodily change and relationship change, with romance and desire and friendship and loss, one part (the last one) is a beautiful and intimate (yet pretty heavy!) mediation on the interactions between parents and a child on a single evening at home (with earlier parts implying that the relationship is rocky (at best) at the point this is set (or perhaps imply that the fears of rockiness expressed elsewhere were unfounded or needless anxiety or negative projecting or otherwise less real than this slice of reality), and the other part (the third) takes up by far the majority of the book, and is very densely packed long paragraphs of prose split into eight sections exploring the reaction to the death of the narrator’s father and how various other people also react to this.
This piece, titled “Death Essay” looks, again, at ageing and at physicality, but explores grief and dying and death in far more depth (and these thoughts and themes continue on into the final section depicting that single evening (unless I’ve completely fucking misread it and misremembered it), and it offers a complex, serious and humanised exploration of various ways to consider life and its significance, as well as death and its philosophical, spiritual and literal meanings.
It’s a very serious book, by far the most serious I brought with me on this trip (somehow!) and offers and evokes difficult (let, alas, important) conversations and ideas. Can denial be as selfish as indulgence? Can wanting things to be made right ever not feel like a waste of time? Is forgiveness for cowards? What is loneliness? What is love? When, too, are these things? And how are they?
I suppose then, yes, it is a philosophical novel… it is also prose poetry, it is essayistic… It’s not a classic holiday read (unless you’re more of an intellectual than I am, which I doubt (if you are, surely you have better things to read rn???)), but it is an evocative, thoughtful and engaging text, and I’m very glad I read it.
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scott manley hadley aka SOLID BALD live
Here’s a video of me recently performing at the prestigious (it has a Wikipedia page) comedy night, Quantum Leopard. Listen to how much fun the crowd is having. You could have that much fun, too!
Forthcoming gigs include the following – there may/will be others:
18th February 2026, 7.30pm: Laughable, Wanstead Library
26th February 2026: Mirth Control, Bexhill-on-Sea
12th March 2025: BALD PERSONALITY DISORDER 30 MIN WIP at Glasgow International Comedy Festival
26th March 2026, 7.30pm: Comedy @ Cosmic, Plymouth
May 2026: BALD PERSONALITY DISORDER FULL LENGTH WIP at the BRIGHTON FRINGE
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