Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

The perfect novel to read on morphine

I lived and breathed and dreamed this hallucinatory, alcoholic suicide note

Albert Finney as the sockless honorary consul Geoffrey Firmin in the 1984 film of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. [AJ Pics / Alamy Stock Photo] 
issue 25 February 2023

On the last day of my grandsons’ week-long visit, Saturday, I was struck by bone pain of an unsurmised ferocity. I reeled around the cave swearing with incredulity. Shoulders, shoulder blade, ribs, the right arm more or less useless. The day before I had looked in the mirror and found a mass on my neck I hadn’t noticed before, hard to the touch yet tender.

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