by George Veck

Rating: *****

Veck produces another blistering look at those who have fallen far down through the cracks in society and the broken wretchedness of the system that has failed them.

Centred around the Morywelon homeless hostel in North Wales, 91-Day Sanction follows a group of tragicomic figures as they stumble through days filled with futility, fatality, and desperation.

91-Day Sanction is a Veck tour de force. Longer than his previous novels*, it rarely lets up as he unleashes chapter after blazing chapter of excruciating antics and feral shenanigans while serving up a savage social commentary. The book and its characters fizz with a deranged energy that makes the reading experience sharply unpredictable and utterly compulsive.

Early chapters introduce the leading players, good and bad. The Morywelon hostel serves as the lodestar around which the narrative unfolds and to which characters arrive or depart, one way or another, and, more commonly, return.

Managed by Denise Groves, who, despite the violence, filth, and hopelessness at the hostel, finds a level of personal solace and purpose among the damaged residents. She’s tough and uncompromising, but with a curiously soft side and a lonely vulnerability, which makes her occasionally oblivious to deeper levels of awfulness operating within the hostel.

All Veck’s characters in 91-Day Sanction are connected in sometimes multiple or surprising ways. Although chapters initially seem to dart about, in a stream-of-consciousness style, full of rapid-fire repartee and killer black humor, focusing on one or two individuals, they all begin to link tentatively together as Veck carves narrative layers through the chaos and moves deftly between his characters to illustrate different, evermore bleak aspects of the story.

It’s deceptively well-structured. Characters, such as Cazza, who open the novel, are endowed with moving depth and dimension as events progress, often in unexpected ways. Veck is a realist, however, and does not shy away from presenting his characters in fairly deplorable situations, often of their own making, although for several of the drunken, drug-induced grifts, there is an element of good intent and a glimmer of ambition, albeit muddled and misguided.

Veck gifts his characters small victories, here and there, but they always end up becoming Pyrrhic. Indeed, this is a collection of people who were brutally failed from day one and languish in an ever-darkening twilight zone of mental health issues, abject poverty, and gnarly substance abuse.

Nonetheless, the law of the jungle prevails, and there are a couple of truly vile individuals. Homicidal lunk, Ianto ‘Shovel’ Morley is one of them, and his nastily crafty sidekick, Rick, is not much better.

Although they prey with sickening abandon on those weaker, they both provoke thought, but in a different way than the other characters, as does Sue, the coke-addled Minffordd shop boss, and Shovel’s partner. Even with James Burgess, the insufferably smug Dole Office Hitler, Veck shows the reader pathetic glimpses of why Burgess takes such sadistic pleasure in his merciless treatment of the unfortunate clients.

The strongest and most affecting chapters in 91-Day Sanction (and they are all impactful) focus on Tammy, Bedrog, and Chase McCaw.  Fragile Tammy is an unusual character by Veck’s standards, she begins relatively settled with prospects and promise. Her takedown is frighteningly swift and easily done. Veck never fully completes the trajectory of her story, and he doesn’t need to; its power and message shout louder through what is not said. Chase’s chapter is a masterclass in pathos, and Bedrog’s pitiful character arc is heartbreaking and, unusually for Veck, quietly and sensitively handled.

91-Day Sanction contains more meaningful detail than previous novels by Veck. He is always reliably authentic to a breathtaking degree, but he uses seemingly insignificant yet wildly amusing observations for later, consequential developments. Furthermore, his prose, always appropriately rough and off the cuff, is now seasoned with softly poignant instances of gritty poetics, especially in the chapter titles.

Sinj and Cazza’s mushroom trip could have evolved into farce, but Veck keeps it on the right side of absurd. Nonetheless, the HMP Veerhurst angle at the conclusion feels as if it should belong in a different book, it’s a touch hurried and underdeveloped, but still painfully well-observed.

Brash, brilliant, and brazenly unrefined, 91-Day Sanction is another brutal eye-opener from Veck that proves impossible to put down. Highly recommended.

Buy from:

Amazon UK | Amazon US

*Click here for my review of One Visit.                                           

*Click here for my review of Monotone Masquerade.                

*Click here for my review of Spurious Scrapper.

*Click here for my review of Ogwen Blues.

*Click here for my review of Rough Visit.

*Click here for my review of Belabour.