Michael and Michelle have been brought up somewhat reluctantly by their alcoholic father after their mother died and it is clear that such trauma has resulted in emotional instability. Harry McEntire’s Michael starts off by telling us the story of his 16th birthday to find his father crucifying himself and then Leila Mimmack’s Michelle relates how her mother died at the time of her birth but it soon becomes evident that these are not necessarily the most reliable of narrators.
Personal histories are retold and reinvented, spinning a web around a kernel of truth that eventually comes to light, or does it. Part of the problem is that their inherent unreliability works against Kelly’s gradual edging towards revelation, one ends up longing for a fuller commitment to the warped strangeness of it all. Kelly’s reliance on Biblical imagery is shockingly striking on first glance but soon becomes superficial in the swathes of densely constructed text.